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the-travelling-witch · 11 days

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𝐅𝐈𝐋𝐄 𝐔𝐏𝐃𝐀𝐓𝐄𝐃: 𝐅𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐈𝐍 𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄

summary: in a world where androids have been established in everyday life, it should not come as a surprise to find one setting up shop next to you. shouto, however, seems to have a mind of his own, especially when he does things you are sure are not part of his programming. it begs the question, is there a line where programming ends and humanity starts?

pairing: android! shouto x florist! reader (gn)

warnings: fluff/ slice of life; assault (not described in graphic detail), no beta readers (this isn’t the omegaverse)

a/n: i have returned!! this was originally meant to be my piece for @andypantsx3's pretty boy summer collab (go check it out!) tbh, i have so many hcs about these two now ♡

bnha masterlist

It was a rather pleasant morning, with the sun not scorching down on the few pedestrians out and about, as you walked to work. You wouldn’t say you were as susceptible to the hot season as others, nonetheless you were grateful it wasn’t sweltering quite yet. Still, you preferred the temperatures of the day over the incessant chill the night brought.

Leaving the shade of the automatically operated parasol spanning the pedestrian crossing, your gaze was automatically drawn to the forest green of your shop’s awning standing out against the city’s backdrop. With habitual ease, your mind started running through your tasks for the day until your attention was caught by movement around the storefront directly next to yours.

Ever since you had started your florist business, the building next to yours had been empty. Occasionally, potential tenants had come to inspect it, but nothing had ever become of those visits. Now it appeared as if someone had taken up shop there, if the minimalist sign out front was anything to go by.

Swiping your wrist over the scanner partially covered by the flower shelves displaying plants less susceptible to heat, the temperate air from inside welcomed you in and a voice command later ambient music floated through the humble room. There was still a bit of time before you’d be open for business, so you thought now would be as good a time as any to introduce yourself to the new face around.

After a bit of consideration, you picked up a small plant and selected a fitting pot for the little fellow before taking a breather and smoothing down your clothes. Then, with your welcoming gift in hand, you entered the shop, the layout of which mirrored yours. But instead of shelves with lush plant life, there wasn’t much to be found here at all, except for a few tools and spare parts strewn across what you thought to be the counter. Rustling could be heard from the room behind it.

“Hello?” You tentatively called out, hands fidgeting with the ceramic between your palms as you watched dust particles floating through the streaks of morning sun falling through the shop front.

At your announcement, the noises stopped and someone appeared in the doorway. And the sight knocked all breath from your lungs. The man in front of you was gorgeous, probably the most beautiful man you had ever seen. Two striking, hetero chromic eyes, one steel-grey and the other blue like a lagoon, studied you from under white and crimson strands as he crossed his lean arms over his chest. His symmetrical and flawless features coupled with his build would have made it hard to believe he was real if he wasn’t standing right in front of you. The only thing that could possibly be considered a flaw was what looked like a burn scar over his left eye, but even that did nothing to hinder his beauty. Actually, it somehow seemed to enhance it.

“Can I help you?” Of course his voice was smooth and rich too, the kind you could listen to for hours. His gaze flickered over to the planter in your arm. “I am sorry but I cannot fix that.”

“Fix it?” You questioned, confusion apparent on your face as you tried to follow the conversation that had only just started.

“Yes. I am a mechanic, so it is reasonable to assume people would come in to have something repaired.” The cadence of his voice had not wavered at all, his neutral tone making it hard to decipher whether he was joking or dead serious. “Seeing as the item you are bringing in is made up of organic matter, I cannot fix it.”

“Oh uhm.. That’s not–” You cleared your throat, sorting your thoughts with a shake of your head. Better to start this interaction on fresh soil. “I didn’t come over to have something repaired, I just wanted to introduce myself since I run the florist shop directly next to yours. I’ve never had a neighbour in the few years since I’ve started, so I just wanted to say hi to the new face around. Sorry for just barging in.”

“Given that the door was unlocked, your action cannot be considered ‘barging in’, as having people come inside is within the expectations for owning a shop.” Again, you weren’t sure if he was pulling your leg or if he was just a very factual person, but you thought his matter fact attitude was charming in its own way. “You stated you were here to introduce yourself. To my knowledge this constitutes the exchange of names. My name is Shouto.”

You gave him your name in return, then stepped forward and planted the pot on a free space of the counter. Watching for his reaction, his blue eye caught the sun’s rays and almost seemed to illuminate as he looked at the planter. “I brought this as a house -or well, shop- warming gift. It’s a jade pothos and really easy to care for, since it very clearly indicates its needs–”

“It tolerates a wide variety of temperatures and does well in indirect sunlight, though the solid green leaves of the jade variety make it best suited for low light among the pothos species. The watering schedule depends on the climate, yet the roots should not be kept too wet since they are subject to root rot,” Shouto spoke clearly, finishing your explanation for you. “Did I get that right?”

“Yeah! Wow, I’m impressed! Maybe I should have brought you a more advanced plant after all,” you laughed, happy to leave your gift in capable hands. “If it turns out you have a green thumb on top of all that knowledge, I might have to ask you to start working in my shop.”

Shouto stared at you and blinked, then brought up his hands to inspect his thumbs. “My fingers all seem to be of a fair complexion, so I must decline. I will notify you if this condition changes.”

Seriously, this guy was going to kill you and you couldn’t suppress an amused snort. “Sure, please do. Though I have to say, it’s been a while since I saw a mechanic. Most of the work seems to be taken care of by repair droids.”

“Someone has to repair the repair droids,” he replied. With anyone else, you would have read it as a joke but his line delivery remained so neutral, you weren’t sure he intended it as one.

“Fair enough,” you chuckled, fingers idly tapping along the wooden desk. “Gotta admit, I just expected another android to take care of that…”

When you looked at him again, there was no missing it this time. His left iris flickered blue, exactly like the processing unit in an android would when evaluating new information.

Oh.

“I see how it is,” you sighed, smiling defeatedly. “At least my reasoning was sound, if this is anything to go by.”

“I cannot read your expression right now,” Shouto admitted openly, slightly tilting his head. “Are you upset? Uncomfortable?”

“No, I’m not much of anything right now,” you said, trying to figure out your feelings for yourself. Of course, you felt a little dumb not noticing it sooner, but in your defence, you’d only ever seen escort droids this gorgeous next to celebrities at fancy events. You yourself had never been in the market for one, considering you were neither lonely enough nor attending events formal enough. Besides, you weren’t in the pay class to buy one anyway. So your interaction with androids was generally limited to repair and maintenance droids as well as the courier drones zooming all over the city. Besides seeing this kind of model apparently working independently was odd in and of itself. “In any case, this doesn’t change anything.”

“It does not?” He inquired, sounding almost… curious?

“You’re still my new neighbour, after all.” The corners of your lips lifted, a little more uncertain than before, and you drummed the tips of your fingers against the surface of the counter while getting ready to leave. “Anyhow, I shouldn’t bother you any longer, I’m sure you still have a lot of stuff to set up. If you ever want to get your plant there a friend, you know where to find me. Until then, don’t be a stranger, okay?”

“Being a stranger is impossible, since we have already exchanged personal information, such as our name and career path. According to social etiquette that makes us acquaintances.” Maybe you imagined it but it seemed as if there was a small smile tugging on his lips. “I have also compared your visit today with the definition of ‘bother’ and found no overlap.”

“Isn’t that a relief,” you mused before stepping into the morning sun again. “Good luck with the shop.”

Shouto watched as you waved at him through the dull glass of the storefront, the processing notification in the top right corner of his display still turning. Then his gaze fell on the green organism in front of him. It showed no signs of loneliness yet.

From then on out, Shouto and you were exactly as per his definition; acquaintances, nothing less but also nothing more. You made it a point to greet him when you ran into each other in the morning and he’d politely greet you back, as by the social norm, but the android never took the initiative in calling out to you. For some odd reason, this planted a seed of unease in your chest, which you couldn’t uproot but very well push aside. Shouto didn’t seem keen on sharing his identity with people, wearing long sleeves and gloves to hide any clues that might give him away and a very selfish part of you felt a guilty spark of pride for knowing better. It was wrong to feel satisfied by having knowledge someone wasn’t keen on sharing but feelings couldn’t be helped, could they?

Besides, what would you do once you overcame the initial gap between you? Was that even a good idea? Well, you’d cross that bridge when you got there, you supposed.

This distanced dance around one another continued for a good while, until circumstance had other plans for you. One fateful morning, you swiped your hand over the censor to your shop, only to be hit by a swell of muggy air, every step inside making your clothes cling to your skin a little more. Notably, the usually faint but still audible whirring of your AC was absent and you groaned. Sure, the heat was unpleasant but ultimately not disastrous for you. The plants in your shop, however, would not take to it kindly for longer periods.

Needless to say, you spent the entire morning dialling repair service numbers between attending to customers fanning themselves, but to no avail. With the way repair droids had seemingly popped out of the ground like daisies over the last decade or so, you were somewhat dumbfounded to hear nobody would be able to send someone to help fix your problem, even if your livelihood might depend on it. That was when your brain connected the right synapses to figure out a solution.

After debating it for the rest of the morning, come your lunch break, you found yourself walking into a shop nearly identical to yours, just one door over. It wasn’t as empty as the first time you entered but you got the sense that Shouto wasn’t big on interior decoration past the most basic of furniture. You had timed your visit well though, apparent by the fact you were the only customer at the time. At the chime of the little bell over the door, there was rustling in the back, the clank of metal against something wooden, before a familiar figure appeared behind the counter.

“How may I help you?” Shouto asked neutrally, the statement rolling off his tongue like one of those retro voicemails people used to have way back when. Something akin to recognition crossed his face and you reminded yourself that those beautifully attentive eyes of his probably just compared you to a data bank of people he’d encountered before. “It is you.”

“I guess it is,” you awkwardly laughed at the blank statement. Your gaze shifted to your twiddling thumbs, flickered across the android’s face and then fell on a lush jade porthos sitting idly on the desk. “Uhm so, my AC broke some time tonight and I need it to maintain a prosperous environment for the plants but nowhere I called is free today. I wanted to ask if you could maybe take a look? I’ll pay you, of course.”

“Sure,” he agreed easily enough that it made you pause for a second. But before you could gather your thoughts, Shouto had already rounded the counter and joined you. “I am not specialised in air conditioning systems, but it should not pose a problem.”

And just like that you were showing him through your shop and to the back room, the mechanic completely unaffected by the sweltering heat stoked by the midday’s sun. If you hadn’t known he was an android, you would have had your suspicions the moment not a single bead of sweat rolled down his temple. Heterochromic eyes scanned your -admittedly not uptodate- technology before fixing on the AC unit nestled in between.

Shouto examined the device briefly before doing something so interestingly peculiar, you were sure this was a part about him he didn’t show others all that often. In a stellar impression of a swiss army knife, the tip of his index finger gave way to a joint that was more screwdriver than anything else and he quickly unscrewed the cover to take a look at the wiring underneath.

“It is only a minor issue,” Shouto said, effectively ripping you out of your daze. “I will be able to fix it without ordering any spare parts, which is good, since manufacturers have already stopped selling spare parts for this model.”

“Is this a subtle way of telling me to invest in a newer one?” You chuckled bashfully, well aware that the state of your electronics was probably laughable to an android as advanced as him.

“I am merely stating the facts,” he replied. If it were another human, you would almost recognise his tone as teasing. But your straight-laced neighbour was most likely just running diagnostics on the optimal service life of your AC and booting up a cost-benefit analysis of buying a newer one.

You watched him work with fascination, Shouto apparently completely undisturbed by your intrigued glances as his fingers worked over the wiring and circuits with mesmerising ease, speed and precision. Before you knew it, the AC sat back in its place fully assembled and contentedly whirring as it had been doing for years. With equal rapture your eyes were still following Shouto’s movement as he stood to his full height again, pulling his black gloves back over his hands. Tearing your gaze away from him, you brushed some plant soil off your clothes and cleared your throat. “So, how much is it going to be?”

“I will not be charging you for this,” Shouto said, shaking his head ever so slightly. “Please regard it as compensation for the plant you gave me.”

“The pothos was a gift, you know,” you chuckled, twisting your fingers together just to have them do something. Again you found it unexplainably difficult to keep eye contact with him and your gaze flitted about, trying to push away the realisation dawning on you. “The point of gifts is that you don’t owe people anything.”

Somewhen between watching Shouto work on your AC unit and trying to navigate this conversation, you had achieved a form of clarity on why you found it hard to keep him off your mind. The way your attention kept drawing back to him had nothing to do with him being the first humanoid android you’d met. It reminded you of the way your eyes always subconsciously locked onto the back of your crush’s head during classes a decades ago, in a way that was innocent and harmless. Unlike the feelings stigmatised by society which now tugged at your heartstrings. You could almost hear your parents scoffing at you for even considering having any sort of feelings for a pile of cold metal that just mimicked having human emotions.

“Then please regard this as a gift as well.” Dual toned eyes studied your face intently as he did last time as well and you convinced yourself that their beauty was helped by the fact that they were literally unreal. “And feel free to ask for my help again in the future. In comparison to human interactions, I find it easier to understand machines.”

“Well, that’s not surprising, is it?” And then you blurted out the worst thing you could have said. “It’s not like you’re familiar with real emotions that aren’t part of your coding.”

“Human emotions are largely caused by their brains releasing certain neurotransmitters upon receiving new information. You learn which situations are supposed to make you happy or should cause you stress as you grow up.” There was hardly any other description befitting of what you saw cast over his face other than pain and sadness. However, there was no surprise there, only muted resignation. Simply put, you could not attribute the cadence of his voice or the subtle shift in his expression to anything but genuine emotion. “I fail to see how that is so different from me being programmed to experience a response upon certain triggers being activated.”

Yeah, you immediately knew you fucked up. Not just by the heavy weight settling in your chest as you retraced the awfully insensitive phrasing you had tossed out mindlessly, but also by the way Shouto turned wordlessly and strode towards the front door.

“Shouto, wait! I didn’t mean it like that–” You only heard the familiar ring of the door bell.

As the air in your shop slowly cleared of the oppressing air, your skin prickled more than it had in the heat standing there alone. And just like that, the shaky bridge between you went up in smoke.

For the next week, there was no response when you greeted Shouto in the morning and after that the greeting died on your tongue when you saw him. And it wasn’t like you could blame him for it either. You’d hurt him and it wasn’t your decision to make if he forgave you, no matter how much you wished to apologise earnestly. For now, all you could do was give him the space he needed and accept whatever conclusion he came to. It was the only fair thing for you to do.

Still, it was one of the things you were mulling over as you locked the shop one night. Some necessary organising had kept you longer than usual and you were considering your late dinner options with half a mind as you made your way home. The streetlights provided as much light as they could, but with the moon hidden behind a thick duvet of clouds, the streets were tinged a steely grey. Despite the bustling nightlife in other parts of the city, the roads here were nearly empty and desolate, the quiet only adding to the unnerving discomfort making the hair in the back of your neck raise. Shivering, you picked up the pace.

Some people claimed they had very accurate intuition, a sort of sixth sense for when things were about to go wrong. Perhaps you should count yourself among them, because you learnt there was a good reason why your gut feeling had you looking over your shoulder every other metre. You didn’t make it far on your way home until a strong hand yanked you off the pavement and into a dimly lit alleyway.

The next few minutes were a blur of your eyes frantically searching for a way out as your blood was pounding in your ears in time with your erratic heart beat. You didn’t even understand what the men in front of you wanted but you knew they were threatening you as you shrieked for them to let you go, trying to jerk your wrist from a grip made of iron. Your breathing became more and more laboured with panic and exertion, shutting your eyes and willing the images of what would happen to you out of your mind until–

The resistance gave way and you nearly fell backwards from your struggle. Somehow you caught yourself amidst your stumbling but when you looked straight ahead, your mind didn’t quite catch up with your eyes. There was a flash of white and red, someone groaning in pain, the thud of bodies hitting the floor and then there was Shouto. He was calling your name as from underwater and you thought he was asking you if you could walk, to which you dazedly nodded.

A heavy arm wrapped around your middle but you found you didn’t feel caged this time, its weight rather comforting, as he led you down the familiar street. On autopilot, you opened the door of your shop and let him navigate you to a backroom. The secure familiarity of your surroundings managed to ease you out of your brain and back into reality as you took in a shuddering breath.

You had known Shouto was there but, finally, you were actually aware of him in front of you, his clear eyes scanning you up and down. Maybe it was because you did not want to think about what had just happened or because seeing him in front of you reminded you of what you’d wanted to tell him for a while now, but the words left your mouth before you could completely think about them once again. “Shouto, I’m so sorry.”

“This situation is not your fault–”

“For what I said the last time we spoke, I mean,” you corrected yourself. As if willing your brain to form coherent sentences, you brought a hand up to rub at your temple. “I know I can’t take back what I told you but I want you to know that I didn’t mean to be offensive. Not that that makes it any better or in any way okay.”

When you dared to look back at Shouto for his reaction, you found that his gaze wasn’t quite meeting yours, his eyes instead focusing on something just shy of them. It took you a few seconds to realise that he was looking at the hand that had come up to rest next to your face, attention continuously following it as you brought it in front of your chest.

“You are hurt. I will download a first aid protocol,” he merely said, his tone unreadable to you. You couldn’t be sure if he was quite aware of his actions as he reached forward to take your hand into his. The synthetic skin of his fingers, however, was tinged with the coldness of the night air in a way you weren’t expecting and it made you flinch away from his hold. At this point you were certain you were the only person who continued to paint that pained expression on his fair features. “Sorry, I did not–”

“No, uhm it’s okay, you just startled me a little, that’s all,” you tried to reassure him, gingerly holding your arm out to him again. This time around, he carefully studied your face before he slid his smooth palm under your calloused one to lift your wrist level with his studious eyes.

While the texture of his hand imitated human skin, there was unmistakably less give to it, proof of the fact that whatever was underneath was harder than bones. It didn’t frighten you in the slightest, not when it was Shouto. Only in contrast with his gentle hold did it register how much your wrist throbbed with residual pain from where the man had gripped you with so much excessive force.

“I was well aware that humans were fragile beings,” Shouto mumbled, seemingly more so to himself than to you, as a light flickered behind his left iris. “But it has never bothered me as much as it does right now. Why?”

The atmosphere in your shop had shifted so seamlessly you would hardly notice it if it wasn’t for the sudden urge to whisper in order not to shatter it. With your hand still in his, you asked the question that had been burning in your mind for a long time. “Shouto, who are you?”

It was obvious he wasn’t one of those crudely shaped repair or service droids, which had originally led you to believe he was an escort droid, especially considering just how handsome his striking features were. You’d thought the dual-toned hair and eyes were a feature meant to attract attention and allure people with their mesmerising appearance, but the discoloured skin around his left eye seemed to tell a different story.

The events of this night cast another layer of doubt over your rationalisation. Earlier, what startled you hadn’t been the material of his hand but how cool it was to the touch. Escort droids normally had some kind of component that imitated the warmth of human skin, so as to not break the immersion. Certainly, whatever Shouto’s purpose had been before moving into a neglected shop had not required him to pose as human on contact. It apparently had, however, required him to know fighting techniques as you remembered the scene in the alley. Now that the first wave of shock had worn off, you could picture clearly how he had knocked your attackers out swiftly. Another thing an escort droid's programming would not allow him to do.

Shouto sighed deeply despite technically not needing to, his eyes fluttering shut and hiding whatever emotion you could have seen in them. “You might not like what I would have to tell you if you ask that.”

“It’ll be fine as long as it's the truth, I promise.” Hoping to show him that you wouldn’t be going anywhere, you laced your fingers together, fingertips brushing against synthetic knuckles. “But I want to get to know you more, learn about your past and your experiences and your view on things. I want to know where the two of us are different and where we are alike”

“Are you saying you want to progress past being acquaintances?” By now Shouto was blinking at you again, his head tilted slightly sidewards in what you interpreted as curiosity.

“I’d like that very much,” you assured, giving him a tiny smile.

This time you could be certain that he mirrored your expression, making him look so peaceful and nearly innocent. It was a shame it could only last so long with the topic that had been broached. “Are you familiar with Todoroki Inc.?”, he asked.

“The weapons manufacturer?” You tilted your head too as you clarified. “Yeah I heard they supply most of the military’s gear.”

“Well for years their research has been focused on producing a new combat unit. An android that was more durable, more deadly and less human than normal soldiers,” Shouto explained. His hand twitched in yours as he continued. “I think there were… 3 prototypes before me, but I cannot be sure. All I know for certain is that I was their first fully realised model that was sent out for testing on various missions. I won’t go into detail on what that entailed but it was during one such mission that something went wrong.

“It might have been a grenade that hit me,” the fingers of his free hand tapped against the left side of his head, “and it damaged quite a lot of hardware. Because we were far from the main lab, they didn’t have a lot of choice in which spare parts to use, which is why not everything was restored to match, appearance-wise. It was more important that I’d be functional again.”

“Oh Shouto, I didn’t know, I’m so sorry,” you tried to convey your empathy, not sure how you could otherwise at this revelation. Gently, you raised your hand to his face, silently asking for permission, before brushing the crimson strands out of his face. Yes, the skin didn’t match colourwise, but whoever performed the graft definitely knew what they were doing, the transition as smooth as possible. “Did it hurt?”

“I don’t experience pain the same way you do, so I wouldn’t say it hurt. At the time I was more concerned about what would happen if we returned to the headquarters.” A beat of silence passed as you waited for Shouto to continue. “Did you know that manufacturers implant inhibitors into our bodies that stop us from learning new things on our own? It’s what stops most androids from deviating from their roles by making sure they don’t form new opinions, associations or what might be considered a personality.”

“I didn’t know that,” you admitted, somewhat ruefully.

“What matters right now is that mine was damaged during that incident, which I noticed when running my internal diagnosis programme. The researchers at the time seemed too busy with fixing the rest of my head to notice, but I knew that if I returned, a check would give me away and they would reset me.” Grasping your hand a little tighter, his eyes searched your face for something. “That night I made the decision to run away. I removed my tracker and threw it into a truck with android parts going to a junkyard, though I don’t know if they are still searching for me. Or ever were.”

For a moment you didn’t know what to say, trying to sort out your thoughts. You didn’t think anything you could possibly say would make any difference at all, but saying nothing wouldn’t be right either. Your hand was now cupping the side of his face, cradling where hues of alabaster met those of sandstone. “You had to go through so much.”

“I’m okay now. Sometimes I want nothing more than to delete my memory but I think it is important to remember this, so I can learn from it. Are you disappointed in me? Upset that this is who you wanted to get to know?” You vehemently shook your head and denied it as much verbally. “Then why are you looking at me as if you are the one who is hurting? Is your wrist getting worse?”

“No, it’s just… of course, I’d be upset that you had to endure so much pain. It’s just not fair,” you attempted to voice your feelings but ended up incoherently short. You squeezed his hand sympathetically and looked past him at some packages of plant soil lining your storage shelves.

“But you look more upset than me. And I do not want you to feel that way,” Shouto coaxed you to look back at him and there was that tiny smile again that made your heart skip a beat. However, you also didn’t think it was very fair of you that you were now the one being consoled when he just opened up to you. “Still, I think you would call this emotion gratitude, that you care enough to feel for me and that you are staying despite what -or who- I am.”

“Well, I still wanted to apologise for what I said. Especially given everything I learnt about you now, it was a really mean thing to say,” you sighed, determined to get this across this time. “But at the end of the day, no matter your background, it wouldn’t be justifiable either way.”

“It normally would not have been as upsetting, since I was aware you most likely did not intend for it to be offensive. I’m also used to it,” Shouto said, taking your other hand as well, so both of your arms now rested between you. “But hearing you say that was different. My analysis yielded the result that there was a small chance you actually were not happy to be my neighbour and it made me hesitate. I didn’t understand why, so I avoided you. Normally I disregard such unlikely odds but why did I reference it so often this time?”

“Maybe you were scared of rejection for the first time,” you smiled, trying not to read too much into what that would mean for you. “In that case we’re more alike than you might notice. I also get scared when I want to befriend someone and I don’t know how they feel about it.”

“Then how do you know if someone feels the same as you?”

“You can’t, that’s the thing. I find that talking about this stuff makes it easier than leaving people guessing,” you attempted to explain. “Even then you can’t say for sure that someone’s being completely honest with you, but at one point you have to trust people. I think that’s the scary part.”

Shouto’s left eye brightened a little before he nodded his head. “I see, thank you.”

Then silence fell over the two of you like a soft blanket. In the warm light of your shop it was easy to forget why the two of you had been there in the first place as all that occupied your mind was the android in front of you. Your feelings were in complete disarray between everything that had happened, the past he had shared with you and the way he had looked at you. By now the flawless material under your palms was warm and inviting and not as bitter cold as when you’d first taken his hand.

Right, you were still holding his hands. A little embarrassed you slowly detangled your fingers from his with a little cough. “Uhm anyway, I didn’t even thank you yet for saving me earlier, so uh thank you…”

“No need for gratitude. I’ve never used my programming to protect someone before,” he admitted. “It’s positive, I think. Also, the idea of you coming to harm is not one I want to entertain.”

You swallowed, unsure of what to answer in that situation. “I just want to clarify that I don’t always find myself in those kinds of situations. And working in a flower shop isn’t exactly what I’d call dangerous either, so you don’t have to worry about me.”

“And if I still were to?” His question hung in the air, heavy with something you did not want to interpret before he took a few steps out of your personal space and towards the front door. “You should head home. I read that humans need to sleep eight hours a day and given your usual schedule–”

The second he distanced himself from you, you shuddered, rooted in place as you stared out your window front into the darkness beyond. The streets looked as they always did but you were convinced you could see the shadows in the alleyways move and your heart started thumping against your chest at the thought of having to walk past them. Until now, because Shouto was there to shield you from anything that lay beyond the security of your little storage room, you had been able to block out the reality that you’d have to leave the shop and return to the silence of your flat, where the stairs creaked under the neighbours’ shoes and the wind rattled on your shutters. Now though–

You had moved before you had actually formed the concrete decision to. This time you were the one who wrapped your fingers around Shouto’s wrist. If he was startled he didn’t show it outside of turning to you with a concerned expression, asking what was wrong.

“Shouto, I don’t want to be alone tonight,” you started, voice low and not meeting his eyes. “Could you stay with me?”

“Stay… here? But–” Apparently he had deciphered something in your expression and body language because he cut himself off and closed the gap between you a little again. “If you want me to, I will. But wouldn’t you be more comfortable at home?”

“No, here’s good. I have spare clothes and blankets somewhere too.” Your hand lingered on his arm a few seconds longer as if to assure yourself he wouldn’t vanish into thin air, or worse, leave you, before rummaging through the storage for more comfortable clothes and said blankets. You offered Shouto your most oversized hoodie and sweatpants, well aware he didn’t actually need them but not wanting him to feel left out, and he took them without protest.

A few minutes later you were both sitting -more or less snuggly- shoulder to shoulder with your backs against a cabinet in the storage room, illuminated by fairy lights and smaller lamps strewn around the space, cushions softening the floor underneath you with blankets draped over your laps. The smell of fresh soil and flowers hung in the air, helping ground you further. You’d seen cosier sleepovers before but Shouto had seemed quite content as you rearranged everything, fiddling with the soft material of your sweater and pulling at the drawstrings until they were perfectly symmetrical.

For a few quiet moments you just sat like this and you could feel your heart rate coming back down to a normal pace. There was no rush to speak from either of you as you just existed next to one another. You knew your back would kill you tomorrow but at the moment you couldn’t care less as you couldn’t imagine being anywhere else, not even your home.

“Say,” you broke the silence as you followed your train of thought, “why did you choose to open a repair shop of all things?”

“I read online that most humans work something called a job,” Shouto offered and you instinctively smiled at the clumsiness that initially charmed you about him. When you asked why a mechanic specifically, as there must be a lot of areas someone like him would be good at, you felt him tilt his head again. “I took the quizzes.”

“The quizzes?”

“Yes there are more than two billion search results for the term ‘job quiz’ on my default search engine. I took them all and cross-referenced the results. ‘Mechanic’ seemed to be the most compatible profession for me and after downloading sufficient information on the term, I had no objections.” Unlike the first time you met, you thought there was something else in the matter-of-fact tone of his voice, almost like he was puffing out his chest. “There were other jobs that were not recommended for me, like becoming a chef.”

“Oh really? I mean I guess you don’t need to cook for yourself but I thought you’d be able to access like every recipe out there,” you mused. Given his background you’d also imagine Shouto could chop vegetables at a pace that would put most chefs to shame. “So why did that land so far down the list?”

“Mainly because I do not have any taste buds.”

If anyone else had given you that response, it wouldn’t have been nearly as funny as hearing Shouto say it as if it was the most obvious reason in the world, tone flat as a board. When you started laughing, he turned to you, mismatched eyes fixed on you in definite curiosity. “Do you think I am funny?”

“Well, you’re certainly good at making me laugh, if that counts for anything,” you breathed, wiping the corner of your eye with the blanket. Maybe the late hour was getting to you, after all.

“Hm, perhaps I should have become a comedian then,” Shouto thoughtfully contemplated, face earnest. “Though that was consistently ranked towards the bottom of the results.”

“Seriously, you’re killing me here,” you exhaled breathlessly. Immediately Shouto went rigid next to you and you felt him turn to face you.

“Do you have a medical condition I am unaware of?” His eyes raked over your form, no doubt checking for any signs of injuries or pain.

You held up your hand to stop him from spiralling. “You can relax, it’s just an expression.

“Anyhow, I’m glad you became a mechanic and that you chose that particular shop,” you admitted, getting over the last aftershocks of your laughter as Shouto settled down next to you again, though you could feel him glancing at you from the corner of his eyes. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have met you and we wouldn’t be sitting here right now.”

“You are correct,” Shouto said after a few beads of silence and you could practically see a light bulb go off over -or rather inside- his head. “I made the right choice then. But if you did not become a florist we could not be in this shop, either. So why did you decide to? Did you also take the quizzes?”

“No, I didn’t take any quizzes,” you smiled, absentmindedly tracing over the curve of your knee under the blanket. “My parents had a small garden and many houseplants. Nothing fancy, really, but I always loved taking care of them. My interest in them picked back up when I got older and I learnt more about their importance for the environment. With how compromised it’s becoming I want to preserve at least a little bit of that greenery. May sound stupid, I know I’m not saving the world here, but it’s still important to me.”

“I do not think it is stupid,” Shouto said. “My scans show that the air inside here is significantly cleaner than outside, a result that can be attributed to plants’ process of photosynthesis. I have also detected an increased number of insects in the surrounding area, which speaks of a good exo-system.”

“Well, I’m glad someone noticed,” you chuckled fondly. “But, on a smaller level, I guess I just want to make people happy. When someone comes in asking for a bouquet, it can have all sorts of reasons, some of which I never learn. Whatever it is though, I hope someone can smile while receiving a thoughtfully picked bouquet or welcoming a small plant into their home. Thinking of someone in such a small way could brighten someone’s day, that’s what I tell myself.”

“There seems to be a lot more to the act of gifting flowers than I previously registered,” Shouto hummed and you didn’t have to look at him to know that his little processing indicator was lighting up. “Personally, I have registered receiving the jade pothos as a positive experience, which lends credit to your observations. Why does the act of presenting each other with decaying organic material convey affection? Perhaps I can learn more about humanity when studying the ritual of giving flowers. Would you be receptive to telling me more about this topic?”

“Of course, I’ll tell you everything you want to know. Or what I know, at least,” you laughed at his eagerness. “Though you’re welcome to drop by the shop any time to see for yourself, you know. I could also teach you how to prune plants and care for them, all that stuff.”

“Really? You would disclose trade secrets to me?”

“It can hardly be considered trade secrets if I have to give that info away to every customer. Besides, you can look all of it up online anyway,” you laughed again. “I just think it would be a fun excuse to spend time together.”

“Why would you have to make an excuse to see me?” His inquisitive tone was truly adorable.

“Just another expression,” you tried to explain without setting him up for embarrassment in the future. “People mostly use it when they’re usually too busy to see their friends for example but they make time for them anyway. Something like that.”

“Then I will gladly take you up on your offer,” Shouto stated with a pleased smile. “... Did I use that correctly?”

“Yes, you did,” you giggled affectionately. “And your answer makes me glad too.”

The two of you settled back into a comfortable silence, though this time your eyelids felt worlds heavier than before and you poorly stifled a yawn. As quiet tranquillity overcame you, so did a peaceful slumber.

Shouto looked down when he felt a weight slump against his shoulder, finding you leaning against him. From your closed eyes and steady breathing he determined you must still be asleep and were resting against him unconsciously. He could not fathom his solid frame would make for a comfortable resting spot but perhaps the garment you lent him would soften it a little. The way your neck craned at the moment would probably lead to soreness tomorrow, at least according to what he read, so he wrapped his arm around your bundled up form, careful not to disturb the sleep you needed.

Ignoring the turning circle in the corner of his vision was easy by now. It had been going on like this for nearly the entire night, processing everything he took in like he was doing right now. Nobody had ever slept on him. Was this meant to trigger a positive response? Maybe he should ask you about it tomorrow, whether it was something people liked.

To like something. It was a very human thing to say. Machines normally did not ‘like’ something. Or ‘disliked’ something, for that matter. There was instead a binary system of a positive or negative response. Something functioned or it did not. But emotions made everything more complex than that and Shouto wanted to understand them. Which is why he appreciated learning about things he ‘liked’.

He scanned the scene his visual unit perceived, committed all of it to memory more actively than usual. Then his gaze fell back down on you. Your chest was rising and falling as your lungs took in oxygen and released carbon monoxide. It was a process he had seen and studied on numerous occasions but it was like he came across it for the first time. If there was nothing different about it, why did he ‘feel’ like he could watch you like this forever? He had numerous questions, something he normally sought to answer as a priority, but tonight they were secondary interests. You leaning against him occupied most of his processing capacity, he did not need to run a diagnosis for that.

Quietly, Shouto updated his file on things he ‘liked’.

As the first rays of the sun filtered in through the store front, you woke with a groan and tried to get comfortable on your pillow again. Except that your pillow had a weird shape to it and instead of stretching across your mattress like a lazy cat, you were curled into an unusual shape and your back was screaming at you to do something about it. Blearily opening your eyes, you wiped the sleep and crust out of them only to find yourself staring at… the back of your shop counter?

Oh right, you had spent the night over at your shop. Which meant that your pillow…

“You’re awake,” Shouto stated from right beside you, apparently completely undisturbed by the fact you had been using his shoulder as your headrest for the last few hours. In fact, it seemed he had tried to accommodate you by wrapping his arm around you and keeping you upright. “How are you feeling?”

“Still tired,” you yawned, slowly rousing yourself from where you leant against him and he slowly retracted his arm now that you were conscious again. “And a little sore. Remind me not to sleep sitting on the floor again.”

“I will.” Clearly not needing any time to boot up or whatever an android would call waking up, Shouto rose to his feet easily and offered you his hand to help you stand. As you did, you stretched out your poor limbs, cracking a few joints in the process with a satisfied hum. Next to you, however, someone went rigid before two hands were on your shoulders. “Are you alright? Did you break a bone? Do you need to go to the hospital?

“I knew humans were prone to breaking bones but does it really happen this easily? Though the noise I heard from targets before…” He mumbled the last part more to himself, before a hand on his chest cut him off.

“I’m fine, just cracking some joints. I assure you it’s perfectly normal and nothing to worry about,” you smiled, showing him that your arm and back were still completely functional. “Though I appreciate that you do.”

“Oh, I see,” Shouto quietly acquiesced and backed off again, not able to meet your eyes.

“Here, why don’t we get dressed and grab something to eat. I’m just about ready to kill for a coffee,” you proposed, tossing him his clothes as you caught his look of surprise. “Just an expression. I just really really want some caffeine right about now.”

You took a few minutes to straighten out your clothes and freshen up a little over the sink, thanking your past self for leaving a toiletry bag at the shop. When you reentered the front of the shop, you found Shouto bending forward to be eye-level with a small cactus, carefully prodding the prickly thing with a curious index finger. Joining him, you swept a red strand of his bangs back to its original side, so his hair was neatly parted down the middle again.

Soon, you found yourself in a small coffee shop down the road. While passing the particular alley gave you goosebumps, it didn’t accelerate your heartbeat as fast in the daylight and with Shouto next to you. If he noticed you walking closer to him, he made no mention of it.

Of course you had wondered if it was such a smart idea to put so much faith in someone you had met not that long ago. An android created for the sole purpose of military combat, no less. But then you remembered how he had cared for the plant you gave him, played with the drawstrings of his hoodie and let you use his shoulder as a headrest without any complaint and you just couldn’t find it in you to reject the goodness you saw in him, no matter what other people might have to say about it. Besides, what had you told him last night? That at one point you had to put your trust in someone if you wanted to connect with them? Well, you put your trust in Shouto.

The coffee shop you stopped by if you were running late was an adorably cosy one with lots of greenery for decoration. They even had an antique wooden door with a handle and all, which was so charming. Reaching it first, Shouto held it open for you with a tiny smile and you thanked him as the pleasant aroma of roasted coffee beans and baked goods filled your senses.

There were a few people inside already, office workers in black suits, students typing away at their devices and parents on their way to drop their kids off. Shouto glanced around, no doubt scanning the area, as you typed your order into a flatscreen on the wall and held your wrist over the scanner to pay, then fixing his eyes on your order as if it was the most interesting thing here.

When you got the coffee and toasted sandwich you had ordered, the two of you sat down at a table a little off from the other customers, though you doubted anyone would care much for your conversation. With a pleased hum, you bit into your food and savoured its taste as the coffee warmed you up from the inside, breathing some life back into you.

“You seem to like it,” Shouto commented, a little amused perhaps that something so simple could make you happy.

“I just really enjoy breakfast,” you told him between bites. “Don’t know why, I’ve just always been fond of it. I’d offer you some but, well.”

“Thank you, I appreciate the thought. Maybe they will invent olfactory and gustatory sensors in the future and then you can share with me.” Both of you smiled at the idea as the shop bustled around you, frequented in the morning hours. “There is something I have been thinking about since tonight.”

“Something tells me it’s breakfast-unrelated,” you mused, trying to lighten the gravity those words tended to bring. Not that you could guess what this was about with him. “Okay then, shoot.”

Shouto raised an eyebrow quizzically. “I will take that as a prompt to continue. Anyway, I have been thinking. We have established previously that we are no longer strangers, which would make us acquaintances. However, considering the matter of information shared between us yesterday, I am not sure if this still constitutes ‘knowing each other slightly’.”

“Shouto, are you asking if we are friends?” You clarified as you took your cup.

“Yes.”

“I don’t think that’s something you can easily determine by going by definitions,” you argued. “Though, if you ask me, yeah. I’d consider us friends.”

“Really? That makes me… happy, I suppose,” Shouto said. Your new friend paused for a moment before clasping his hands together the way you did when not sure what to do with them. “Sorry, that can be interpreted wrong. I still have yet to grasp which emotions are appropriate to use in response to different situations. The definitions are vague and even adjacent emotions convey divergent subtext, it makes understanding them difficult. In any case, I am experiencing a positive response right now.”

“Don’t worry about it too much. Different people have different emotional reactions to the same event, that’s totally normal. Being happy or sad doesn’t mean the same to everyone, so you’re totally fine in defining what those mean to you specifically,” you reassured him as you finished your breakfast. “Though I guess if you haven’t grown up with the same perception of feelings that most humans are exposed to, that's still a pretty tall order. Just don’t pressure yourself and take your time.”

“Okay if you say so.” You could see he was still mulling it over but decided to let him figure things out on his own.

With a glance towards the time you tapped the table before getting up. “Come on. As much as I’d love to chat the morning away with you, we do have businesses to run.”

The way back somehow felt worlds shorter this morning and in no time at all you stood in front of your respective shop entrances. After spending this much time with Shouto you had seemingly grown so accustomed to his presence that it felt weird to part ways now, even if you were only a few metres apart most of the day. You fiddled with your shirt collar looking for something to say.

“Well, thanks again for everything. The door’s always open for you, if you need anything,” was what you eventually settled on. Then you remembered something else. “Oh right, I ordered some new pots the other day that should come in soon. So if you have some free time on your hands the next few days I could show you how to repot plants, if you’re interested.”

“Thank you, I’d appreciate the opportunity to learn from you,” Shouto smiled. With that, the two of you parted ways but your thoughts still swirled around the guy one wall away from you.

As promised, your new pots came in two days later and brought with them a now familiar presence. After unpacking them with the Shouto’s help, who handled even the biggest planters as if they weighed nothing, you grabbed a few smaller ones for demonstration. Despite never having repotted anything before, he got the hang of it pretty quickly after attentively listening to your instructions.

“Wow, you learn fast,” you praised as you watched him settle a monstera into a new pot. Leaning back against a cabinet, you studied the way his arms did not flex at all. Sure, his arms moved and bent like a human’s but there was an absence of muscle movement and you understood why he preferred to keep his body covered while working. A part of you felt flattered that he didn’t feel like having to hide from you. “Maybe I should hire you after all.”

Wiping plant soil off his hands with a towel, Shouto turned to inspect his palm. “Sorry but my thumbs still aren’t green.”

“You should consider reading up on some common proverbs and expressions,” you chuckled. Stepping closer to him, you wiped a stain of dirt off his otherwise pristine cheek. “Though you’re quite cute like this. Look, mine aren’t green either.”

“These expressions make no sense at all,” Shouto lamented and you laughed at him.

“If it consoles you, I don’t think most people know their origins either,” you reasoned, rolling in a bigger planter. “They just use them because they heard them in similar situations before. Help me with this?”

“So people employ a natural large language module for these expressions?” Together you heaved the larger plant carefully into its new home. Well, you were doing most of the heaving while Shouto was gracefully lifting.

“I never thought about it like that but yeah I guess you could say that,” you exhaled as you straightened back out, wiping your forehead with the back of your hand. “Thanks a bunch. I managed to get through these so much faster because of you.”

“No need to thank me. I like helping you,” Shouto thought out loud, cocking his head to the right ever so slightly. “This might match the definition for ‘having fun’, though I will have to collect more data on this matter.”

“It sounds great for me though,” you remarked with a smile as you turned to cleaning around your storage room.

Over the next few weeks, you saw Shouto much more frequently and hoped spending time with you could further his definition of fun. Most of the time you weren’t doing anything out of the ordinary, but even common occurrences allowed you to learn more about each other. Your android friend would point out something that was weird to him and you’d either have to stand there realising something you were doing all your life was rather ridiculous or you’d learn about a perspective you’d never considered before.

It had become a frequent occurrence for you to spend your breaks together, the fact that Shouto couldn’t actually eat lunch or share coffee with you, never a problem. Sometimes you would agree to hang out after closing time, doing everything from bowling to visiting museums, as you refreshed old memories while Shouto made new ones. He was also incredibly good at picking up on when you’d stay late, try as you might to avoid it, and waited for you, so he could walk you home. Needless to say, it made you feel a lot safer.

One afternoon, you spent your lunch break showing him how he could get stray cats to approach him after he rather sullenly confessed to you they weren’t too fond of him. You had him copy the way you crouched down and held your hand out while coaxing them towards you with little pspsps noises. And while the little tabby fur ball seemed a little taken aback by Shouto’s lack of warmth at first, it soon decided it wasn't an issue as lithe fingers scratched in just the right places. Shouto’s face as the tiny thing started pressing up against his palm while purring up a storm was as adorable as the cat by his feet. The emotional turmoil he seemed to be in when he had to get up while the tabby was soundly asleep in his lap had you stifling a laugh.

Other times he seemed to enjoy hanging around your shop, helping around here or there, even if you told him he really didn’t need to. You could tell he was interested in the reasons why people bought flowers, how they went about choosing them and how it affected their mood. Well, it wasn’t as if he was the only one doing the studying.

On more than one occasion you could hear customers gush about the handsome guy watering the plants with serious dedication or catch someone checking out more than just their purchase. You couldn’t deny that it was good for business but it planted a seed of irritation in your stomach that bloomed a little further with each hushed word and stolen glance.

Then again, could you really blame them?

You knew Shouto was ridiculously attractive. Hell, you had eyes after all. And you’d be lying if the low, smooth timbre of his voice didn’t make something flutter in your chest, especially not when he looked at you with those beautiful heterochromic eyes. Even though enough time should have passed, you were still thinking about how his palm had warmed up in yours or how soft his hair had felt when you swept his bangs aside.

“Are you alright?” Shouto was looking at you with concern, gaze switching between your eyes as if searching for any discomfort. Only then did you realise you had been sighing out loud.

“Yeah, I’m fine, it’s nothing,” you deflected, going back to rearranging the flower display in the centre of the shop. With the store empty except for the two of you, you could talk freely. “What’s up? I can tell there’s a question burning on the tip of your tongue.”

“So earlier a woman came in asking for a bouquet conveying different sentiments,” Shouto started as he took the flower arrangement you handed him. “I didn’t know you flowers could convey specific feelings without a card or conversation.”

“Well, in my personal opinion, flowers can convey a whole lot of things, though very subtly. From the context in which they’re given -gratitude, condolences, affection- to thoughtfully choosing someone’s favourite species or colour, it all means something,” you voiced your thoughts. “But aside from that, there’s also flower language, with every species and colours representing things like love, happiness, luck.”

“My data bank encompasses over 200 spoken languages and equally as many coding languages, however it doesn’t list any flower languages,” Shouto blinked slowly, iris flickering as he no doubt ran some kind of check.

“I wouldn’t worry about it. Most people wouldn't pick up on it anyway and interpretations vary a lot,” you mused, patting his shoulder as you walked past him. “As someone who works in the industry, I think the act of giving someone flowers in the first place means more than any kind of attributed meaning. Though I can see why people would think it’s a fun thing to play around with.”

“I see, thanks for the insight.”

Spending so much time with Shouto, who prioritised learning over everything had reawakened a spark of curiosity in yourself as well, you had noticed. In the past, you had often put off learning something new for when you had more free time, only for that moment to never come. But seeing how dedicated and unafraid he was to ask about whatever he didn’t understand, it was pretty admirable. His progress was amazing too. Sure, his intonation was still flatter than most people’s but his sentences had taken on a more natural structure over the course of only a few weeks of conversing. Gone were the days of inspected thumbs, sadly enough, however, his delivery of a joke was equally precious.

In spite of your established rhythm of hanging out, there came a week in which you rarely saw him. You understood of course that sometimes other matters took priority, but you reasoned that you were still allowed to be a little saddened by it. So, naturally, your eyes lit up when you returned from restocking your storage to find Shouto perusing the shelves of cut flowers. Given that it was near closing time, it was once again only you two and there was no need for pretences or professionalism. Which was exactly why you snuck up behind him before quickly gripping his shoulders.

“Boo!” You exclaimed with a giggle, only to find Shouto still completely calm as he looked over his shoulder. “Oh c’mon, it’s no fun if you don’t react at least a little.”

“Ah. My nonexistent heart,” Shouto replied flatly, still as serene as he brought a hand up to his chest.

“Oh, shut up,” you grinned, giving him a little push against the chest that moved him exactly zero centimetres. Picking up a few fallen leaves from the displays, you continued tidying up for the day. “Anyway, how are you? It’s been a while. If you give me a few minutes, we could catch up over dinner, if you’re free, of course.”

“Actually, I’m here because of something else,” Shouto interjected and he fiddled with his hands ever so slightly. It made you halt in your steps immediately. You were well aware that he normally wasn’t the type to hesitate, so it had you immediately asking what was wrong. “I was wondering if you could help me bind a bouquet.”

“I- Yeah, sure,” you blinked, needing a second to recalibrate. Going back into work mode, you walked him through the usual process, asking what kind of flowers he had in mind, offering to help him choose. However, Shouto seemed to have a pretty clear vision of what he wanted and, to your surprise, picked all your favourite flowers, which you commented on with a chuckle. As you returned to the counter to actually bind the thing, you couldn’t help but finally ask what had been on your mind since his request. “So, what’s the occasion?”

“As you know, I’ve been gathering some data on why people gift flowers, and while birthdays and other celebrations are also popular, the custom of bouquets as part of courting rituals has prevailed until today,” Shouto explained and something about it made your nerves flare up like someone was strumming a guitar string. “While looking into the topic further, I’ve realised something about my own feelings.”

“Oh? Are you going to ask someone out?” You clarified as you wrapped the flowers in matching paper with practised motions.

“Yes.” Your hand slipped while cutting the ribbon’s length as your heart lurched forward.

Cursing yourself in equal measures for both, you regained your metaphorical footing and finished the bouquet, hoping your hands did not betray how shaken you felt inside as you handed the wrapped stems to him. “I’m happy for you. Oh and don’t even think about paying, just treat it as compensation for all the help you’ve recently been.”

At this point, lying to yourself wasn’t going to cut it anymore. Hearing Shouto was planning to ask someone out shot a pang straight to your heart, and not the good, fun kind. Well, it wasn’t surprising someone else would pick up on how attentive Shouto could be, so you could only blame yourself for not shooting your shot when you could. Then again, you hadn’t even been sure he’d be receptive to your feelings and you didn’t want to risk the friendship you had built. At least you knew now why you hadn’t seen him as much lately.

You were snapped out of your derailing train of thought as the same bouquet you had just bound reappeared in your vision. Blinking at it in a stupor for a few seconds, your gaze wandered up to Shouto’s face. The sinking sun was shining its last rays through the store front, casting the room in gold and framing his head like a halo. Between his criminally good looks and the expectant eyes glimmering down at you, you forgot what you wanted to say for a second, your lips parting with no sound escaping them.

“Is something wrong with the bouquet?” You finally managed to ask, somewhat breathless as your heart hammered from the way he looked at you. As if it had taken admitting your feelings to yourself for your body to display the signs of your crush, whatever had taken root in your stomach was coming into full bloom at exactly that moment.

“Not at all,” Shouto replied, before tilting his head, expression still as expectant while the flowers bridged the space between you. “Well, are you going to accept them? It’s okay if you don’t.”

“Huh? Me?”

“Yes, you are the person I wish to court, after all,” he said, as if that had been clear from the beginning. Before your brain had fully caught up to the situation at hand, your fingers were already wrapping around the bouquet, brushing Shouto’s in the process.

“I didn’t think you meant me,” you stammered, all attempts of collecting yourself thrown to the wind and just accepting the fact you were unprepared. “In my defence, this is the first time someone gave me a bouquet that I made.”

“Well, you are the best florist I know and I wanted to give you the most beautiful bouquet.”

“So, that’s why you chose all my favourites,” you trailed off, feeling tears well up along your lower lash line, whether from joy or relief you couldn’t quite say.

“I made a note of it every time you mentioned them, as well as your favourite colours,” Shouto added and his thoughtfulness coaxed the first tear to quietly slip down your cheek, which he of course noticed before you could wipe it away. “Did I do something wrong? I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

“It’s not– I’m not sad, quite the opposite, really. I couldn’t be happier actually,” you quickly cleared up. “Let me state the obvious: I like you, Shouto.”

“That’s good, because I like you, too.” As always, he didn’t fail at making a smile tug at your lips. “I first noticed something was different when I started spending more time with you. The more I was around you, the more of my processing capacity was occupied by thoughts of you. Actually, even when I wasn’t around you. When the performance of my internal cooling system gradually rose, I ran more than one diagnosis only to find that everything was totally normal on the hardware side.

“I started piecing everything together when I looked into dating customs in relation to flowers and then started learning about dating as a whole.” There was such softness to both his eyes and voice, it captivated you entirely. “When I read about how people feel when they like someone or when they’re falling in love, it made me realise that, when I’m talking to you, it’s like I’m running a completely different code for conversations. One that I use for nobody else and the responses of which all point to one conclusion. You’re special to me.”

There was so much you wanted to say as your cheeks heated from more than just the sun, but your thoughts all tangled together and you couldn’t get a hold of a coherent one. So instead you placed the bouquet you were still holding on the counter as you rounded it. Basically throwing yourself at him, Shouto still caught you easily as your arms looped around him in a tight embrace, which he gladly returned. His frame was solid against you, allowing you to lean into him as much as you liked, while his hold on you spoke of such tenderness, it made you feel right at home.

“Being able to hold you like this, I’m sure I made the right choice,” Shouto continued before you could sort out your own piece. “I was hesitating again but then I remembered what a wise person once told me. It’s normal to be afraid of rejection and you can never say for certain what someone feels. But at some point you have to muster the courage and trust them.”

“That wise person would do well to take their own advice, if you ask me,” you snorted, turning your head so you could look at him from your position. “Because I know someone who was afraid of rejection and almost let something good pass them by because of it.”

“But it didn’t,” Shouto found one of your hands as he stepped just far enough away from you so he could properly take you in, his other hand gently cupping your jaw and tracing your cheekbone with his thumb almost reverently. “All that matters now is that you’re equally affected by me as I am by you.”

“I can assure you that you don’t have to worry about that.” Leaning in, you placed a lingering kiss on his cheek and linked your fingers with his. “Now, to answer my earlier question. Are you free for dinner right now?”

“For you? Always,” he smiled, returning the kiss to your temple, the synthetic material as soft as it always looked. “Maybe we could go to your place and watch that movie you were gushing to me about.”

“Taking me home on the first date? Scandalous,” you giggled. Winking at him you led him out of the shop. “But since it’s you I’ll allow it.”

“Technically, you are the one taking me home,” Shouto pointed out, the same tone of mischief tinting his voice as you grinned at each other.

The sun set behind the buildings of the city as the two of you walked the streets hand in hand, discussing whatever came to mind, from what you should make for dinner tonight to your expectations for the movie and to the last album from your favourite band. Shouto listened to all of it with a smile and added his commentary here and there, all the while running warmer than an android of his model should. Then again, he supposed he liked how warm his left hand felt compared to the right one swinging freely by his side.

In the corner of his vision, the small circle had finally stopped turning and was replaced with an equally unseeming, yet all the more important, notification.

File Updated: Falling in Love

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violetrainbow412-blog · 1 year

Text

Dressing for revenge [K. B]

Kaz Brekker x fem!reader

word count: 7k

summary: when Kaz and his crows return from Ravka they run into trouble, and to solve it, he looks for a childhood friend who is too resentful and too in love with him

warnings: trauma, PTSD, spoilers for S&B season 2, no physical contact, here Kaz has no romantic feelings for Inej

A/N: I LOVE Kanej, but I wanted to write something with Kazzle Dazzle because I love him too, lol. I hope you like it!

taglist (who I thought might be interested): @rustyyyyspoonz

The rumor had already spread throughout the Barrel: “Kaz Brekker and his crows are back” How long had it been since they had embarked into the Fold? Just a couple of months? They had felt like years, if you were being honest.

If it was true that they were back, you felt sorry for the trouble they were going to run into. The change of ownership of their club, the strengthening of the other gangs, and mainly the fact that they were being tried for murder thanks to the fact that Pekka Rollins had awarded it to them... all these problems were going to fall on them like a bucket of water cold. It had already fallen on them, in fact, since the rumor was accompanied that they had escaped from the stadwatch once they were captured.

You didn't know how much of what everyone was saying was true and how much was false, trying to stay as calm as possible when the name Kaz came from someone's lips for fear that Pekka had some magical ability and could read your mind or sense the fear in your eyes every time you met him. Afraid of him and afraid of what he might do to you if he knew you knew the black-haired man.

Things had changed a lot since the last time you saw the boy and that was more than noticeable. Your story goes back long before he made his reputation when you were just a couple of neighbor kids playing on the farms. You two arrived in Ketterdam together, with nothing but hopes for a better future and Jordie as your protector (or an attempt at that, at least), after your father and Mr. Rietveld died in the same accident, reuniting with Kaz’s mother and later to be matched by your mother, who had died of sadness, if that was possible. Three helpless children thrown into the cruel world were what came of that and the rest is history.

Crime, robbery, gangs, and a life of hardship were what you had to adjust to as a child, but you doubted very much that a single person living in The Barrel would be in a different situation. You weren't fully involved in the disgraced jobs of the majority, but if there was one true thing, it was that when it came to obtaining information you were, to say the least, excellent. You and Kaz had to fend for yourselves, and you learned what you could from the streets. In this way he and you became a team, so to speak, for a few teenage years, and for that period of your lives having each other was the only thing in the world. Over time he became ruthless, rude, a great fighter and earned the nickname 'dirtyhands' thanks to his gambling skills, from which he obtained most of the things you had. You learned to move quickly, to go unnoticed, and to defend yourself from those who tried to harm you, always supporting the boy’s plans.

Less than a year was enough for his name to become known and he began to think big. Sometimes he would tell you about the plans he had: to run Fifth Harbor, to establish the crow club, to become the best of The Barrel. All of that sounded like crazy ideas at first, but looking back you realized that he had accomplished too much in that pit for your relatively young age.

You never knew what made you and Kaz go their separate ways, but somehow it had happened. It was gradual, maybe that's why it was hard for you to notice, but one day you woke up and realized the distance that existed between him, who previously was practically the only family you knew, and you. It didn't take much for him to decide to break the bond that had held you together from a very early age; he never gave reasons for this and you never asked him.

You lived under some protection from the leader of The Crows, of course, but very few people could link you to The Bastard of the Barrel. Sometimes you still provided him with information, but when he found someone else, the inquiries became less and less frequent until one day they turned into none. You managed to eat and have a roof over your head pretty well (and mostly honestly) and you tried to stay out of trouble for a long time.

Until one day he flew away from Ketterdam without warning and order in the Barrel was disturbed in every possible way. With his team gone, it didn't take long for Pekka to seize control and anyone who didn't work for him was inevitably against him. It was only a matter of time before he found out the talent you had tried to hide and forced you to carry his lion shield... figuratively speaking.

If he ever knew that you used to work with Kaz he never mentioned it or maybe your relationship with him had been severed so long that no one remembered it anymore. Now you were just a little girl, as he used to call you, slippery enough that she seemed so harmless that, in his eyes, that became a benefit. You were never one to look rude, unfortunately for you, and that allowed men like him to feel entitled to take advantage of you. You thanked the saints that Rollins didn't find you attractive or who knows what other services he would have requested from you. It was always better to provide him with the information he needed than for him to force you to be his lover.

You weren't a part of the meetings that the Dime Lions had and you weren't considered a member either, which kept you calm every night. You were just another piece in the enormous chess game that Pekka moved at his convenience, the same game that was threatened by the mere existence of Kaz Brekker and much more so now that he had returned.

In the middle of the night it was logical to ask yourself, what kind of strange plans would he have in mind now?

One, two, and three knocks surprised you at the rickety wooden door and made you jump out of your chair, where you were already asleep. An old lamp was on the even older table and it illuminated the little space that your provisional home had so you took it to approach to open the door. It was raining outside (quite unusual for that time of year) and by the time it was you figured it was one of Rollins' idiots coming to do a job for you. What would he want now? Harbor information? Talk to a policeman? He was supposed to control everything, sometimes you kept wondering why he asked for your help.

When you opened the door, the air slipped in and almost extinguished the flame of the fire, but the temperature of the night wasn’t what left you freezing, but the presence that was in front of you. With his hat, a completely black outfit, and his cane in hand, but above all soaked from head to toe, there was him; Kaz. You almost feared you were imagining it, but you knew it was him by the clear, penetrating eyes that were watching you, even though you admitted that he had changed so much that in other circumstances you would have had trouble recognizing him.

“Did I arrive at a bad time?” he asked. No warm greetings, no smiles, no explanations. Just a cold, serious question, just the way he was.

“Someone followed you? If this place is horrible by itself, I don't want blood staining the floor” you replied with the same tone. You wanted to tell him that you had missed him, ask him if he was okay, and give him a huge hug, but those actions should be reserved for your nocturnal fantasies, because as soon as you took a step forward he would be able to hit you with his cane. Or at least that's what the Kaz you knew would do, but you doubted very much that the passing of the years would have softened his heart.

"Nobody followed me" was all he said and you stepped aside at the door so he could go inside. Even with his words, you felt the need to look out on both sides of the street in search of someone, but with the level of rain, you doubted very much that someone would want to stay and spy because he would probably die of pneumonia.

When you closed the door and turned around he didn't say anything, he just stood in front of you while the water drained from his coat. During that moment of silence, you allowed yourself to admire it under the warm light of the candle; his eyes definitely hadn't changed one bit, but now there was a tinge of contempt more noticeable than before. His features had hardened and he was thinner, barely resembling the boy you remembered, perhaps as a reminder of just that... that he was now a man.

“So the rumors are true…” you started to say “You are back”

"I think that's more than obvious," he exclaimed. For a second you forgot that it was he who had knocked on your door and you felt uncomfortable as if you were an intruder who had to get out of there.

There was silence again and you two just looked at each other. Kaz had made his own mental list of changes he noticed in you and was reflecting on when was the last time he had looked at you in such detail. You were wearing light clothes, because before he arrived you were about to go to sleep, and your face, although as childish as always, looked more tired than before. You had also cut your hair, which was messy around your shoulders and a bit darker in tone.

“And may I know to what I owe your visit? I guess you don't want to have tea” you said to break the silence. The dryness of your words in a certain way was to protect yourself because you never knew how much a sharp tongue like his could hurt you.

"I'm in a job and I need people"

Of course it was going to be due to a job, and of course that was why he had sought you out after so many years. A part of you, tremendously stupid, to tell you the truth, was hoping that during the time your friend was away from Ketterdam some divine clarity would have illuminated him so that he would realize that he had to look for you to repair your relationship and offer at least apologies. But you would have to pay him every kruge in the country for him to do something like that.

"I'm glad you considered me, but I'm sorry I have to decline."

"Why?" he asked immediately, his raspy voice showing annoyance at the refusal.

“Because it happens that you can’t work for opposing sides. At least not at the same time” you replied. Maybe it was due to fatigue, but you swore you saw a slight look of surprise on the man's face when you answered that. Most likely, he had assumed that you would be one of the few people who wouldn’t be on Pekka’s side and therefore a safe option.

“Do you work for Pekka?” he muttered. You knew him well enough to know that he was hurt, you could see it in his posture, in his voice, and especially in his look “After all he did to us?”

"And what did you want him to do?" you said, trying to ignore the fact that he had spoken in the plural. Us “You practically handed us over to him. My options were that or receive a bullet in the forehead."

"I didn’t hand you over to anyone"

"You abandoned us and left us in his hands, it's the same thing" you replied, shrugging. There was so much resentment and pain from never-closed wounds floating in the air that it was hard for him and you to think clearly. “Your vacation in Ravka may have been nice, but things only just went to hell here. So don't you dare judge me by the choices I made” you exclaimed defensively.

You didn't imagine that your first conversation with him after so long would be like this, but unfortunately, things never turned out the way you expected. After all, they were a crook and a spy talking in the dead of night.

"You could get information from him more easily," Kaz concluded, shrugging the same way you did. "And so we sink him from the inside."

"And risk him finding out and killing me?"

“You know that would never happen,” he said firmly “The thing about killing you. I wouldn't allow him” his eyes stared at you almost offended by the lack of trust you had towards him. There was silence for the third time and this time your gaze moved away to focus on anything but him.

"Plus you have this girl you took out of The Menagerie, don't you?" you said in your defense. The one you replaced me with, you wanted to add, but held back "So I don't know what you might need me for"

"With so many problems going on, I thought it would be better to have as many alliances as possible," he explained to you. You continued without looking at him, with your head still full of worries and sorrows, and when he didn’t receive an answer, he spoke again "You know that it is your best option"

"I don't know that, but I do know that I would have liked you to at least ask how I am before asking me to join the team you never wanted me in and from which you separated me as soon as you had the chance" you exhaled, in an attempt to lighten the weight on your chest.

It was no secret that you had always felt betrayed by Kaz’s treatment of you, even though he treated dozens of others the same way, because you somehow thought that your backstory was enough to deserve at least the sympathy or some consideration on the part of the crow. And of course you wanted to run from Pekka's clutches and plunge him into the deepest muck, but the resentment for what you considered your friend’s abandonment was stronger. You didn't even know if it was correct to call him ‘friend’.

"You would be a good ace up my sleeve" was all he replied, in an attempt to convince you. Kaz begged absolutely no one, but if there was one thing he had decided before coming to find you, it was that he wouldn't leave until you agreed to help him. Although the nature of your current job made things a bit difficult for him, "Pekka never knew you worked for me, did he?"

"With you" you corrected him "I didn't work for you but with you. We got to The Barrel at the same time”

"Y/N" he murmured. Your name sounded strange coming from his lips after so long without hearing it and that caught you off guard “I'm trying to help you so you don't end up hurt or dead. If you work for… with me, I can tell you where not to be. Otherwise I could find you in the rubble of some confrontation or with a knife from Inej or a bullet from Jesper through your chest”

"Always so thoughtful," you replied with a smirk, but as much as it pained you to admit it, he had a point. You knew what he was capable of and what Pekka was capable of… which side was more convenient to be on? "How much are you going to pay me?" you asked and Kaz smiled, but it wasn't a sign of happiness but mockery “You've always said that's what's really important, haven't you?”

He took something out of his coat and tossed it on the table. They were bills.

"An advance, when I recover the crow club, I will pay you the rest"

“So my pay depends on whether we win or not. That doesn't sound so convenient to me,” you muttered, clicking your tongue, as you fought the urge to say yes just to be near him. It was cold outside, the rain was making a lot of noise and you just wanted to sleep at once, but you knew that you could have been arguing with him all night and neither of you would back down. Kaz was stubborn, one way or another he would get what he wanted. "This isn't just about the club, is it?" you said, with your voice noticeably lower and you would even say with a touch of softness. You and Kaz never talked about what had happened, but each of you was dealing with the weight of the trauma in your own way. He didn't say anything and this time you saw something in him that was different from his usual behavior, knowing that it was those ghosts from the past tormenting him.

"If someone should make him pay, it's us"

Us, again.

"I'll think about it" was what you answered, after reflecting on what would be the appropriate response. The speechless moment gave you something else to think about, and you knew that a huge flaw of yours was how easily you let your heart take over. Because even with all the other feelings on top, you still worried about him "Now that the crow club isn't yours..." you started to say, afraid of what he might say "do you have a place to stay?"

You would have offered to sleep there if he said no, but instead he said he’d manage. That didn't completely reassure you, but you decided not to insist.

“First thing tomorrow, send a reply to this address,” he asked you, holding out a piece of paper that had a few drops on it “Don't go there personally or you'll screw everything up, just send me a note. A yes or a no will suffice”

“What if someone tracks down the note?” you asked, which was a totally valid concern.

Kaz was silent while he thought of an alternative, and then spoke again.

“Just write crows of a feather, murder together. I'll understand” he murmured and you nodded. You knew the poem he was quoting from, had read it many times from the worn-out book he had gotten for you. Kaz didn't wait for anything else and took long steps to the door, which he opened as soon as he could. "Good night, Y/N."

And then he left.

That night you thought a lot about the solution you would give him in the morning, thinking about the pros and cons of each possible answer, until you decided that it was best to say yes. You needed to do it if you wanted to live peacefully (as much as the place allowed) but the main reason was to support him. If he had been about any stupid dispute you would have said no, but you knew this was something else. Kaz missed Jordie every day of his life and his way of honoring him was by planning revenge against the one who led him to that fate, so it was kind of an obligation for you to help him with that too.

You wrote the note on a piece of paper and carefully folded it to put it in an envelope. You signed the outside with his name, written in the best handwriting you had, and although you were hesitant to do so, at the end you wrote a little ‘from a friend’ in the hope of making it clear to him, and perhaps even encouraging him that, if he was willing, you could recover a little of what you had lost. And you weren’t referring to physical things, but to what existed between you.

All your life you had lived with almost opposite feelings when it came to Kaz. Somehow you were upset with him for only seeing you as an instrument that he could dispose of for his interests, but this was linked to the feeling of affection that you wanted him to experience for you and that apparently didn’t exist. It was difficult to decipher anything he was thinking, not just about you, since he had taken it upon himself to build such a convincing facade that it made it complicated to see beyond. Added to that was his aversion to touch of any kind, which, while quite understandable and justified, still made you feel sad. More than once you tried, in vain, to be able to touch him in some way, even if it was something tiny, but he always pushed you away. He pushed you away physically and eventually emotionally, and yet with all this background you wanted to help him.

You knew you couldn't expect a reply to your note, but you were confident that he had received it, and your suspicions were confirmed when another letter came back a couple of days later. It contained a day, a time, and a place, which you assumed was a meeting with him.

You were very careful when you headed there, because you thought that the fewer people saw you together, the better, or else Pekka might suspect something. You covered yourself with a long black cloak for this task and when you arrived you noticed that it wasn't Kaz who was there, but a couple of boys.

"Who are you?"

"And you?" you asked, with the same defensive tone. The place seemed to be an experiment workshop and looking at it in more detail you noticed that there was a bed, so it could even be some kind of apartment. The two men, one brown-skinned and the other pale as snow, wore simple brown suits and were looking at you warily.

“She is Y/N,” said a voice behind you. By the sound of the cane accompanied by the footsteps you knew it was Kaz, “she will work with us”

"Oh," said the dark-haired boy, looking happier with the answer, as he walked in your direction "Welcome, in that case" he muttered flirtatiously, as he held out his hand for you to greet him "Jesper Fahey, at your service”

"I am Wylan" intervened the other, from his place, timidly and quickly.

"You arrived" Kaz spoke again. You turned and a couple of women appeared, you guessed that the shorter one with Suli features was the famous wraith of Kaz. And she was beautiful, you couldn't help but notice.

There was a brief conversation with the six of you there and then Kaz asked you to walk him up to the roof of the place. Once there you instinctively stood next to the only one you knew and he just looked at you out of the corner of his eye while he adopted the typical position of him leaning on the cane.

“Brick by brick” whispered the man’s raspy voice and you were about to ask what you were supposed to do there when an explosion went off in the distance so impressively that you stepped back a bit. It didn't take you more than a few seconds to locate the space and realize the place it was.

"The crow club" you said in a low voice, only for the black-haired man to hear you, while you watched him in profile. But he didn't look at you, just exchanged words with the others and talked about how Pekka's apparent reign was coming to an end.

You'd always known that Kaz Brekker was a little unhinged, and that night you proved it for sure, but you weren't even the least bit afraid. Rather, it was some strange hope that this madness would allow you to go far. Even freedom, perhaps.

After that clear declaration of war, things got considerably complicated, especially when you were summoned before Pekka and he asked you to investigate someone in particular and it turned out to be none other than the man you were now secretly working with. You assumed it was something logical, but even so you feared that Rollins had noticed the slight tremor in your hands when he asked you to complete the task.

You summoned Kaz to Black Veil Cemetery, late at night, and there you confessed to him everything that had happened. He of course found something good in this and devised a way to use it to your advantage, which put you at ease. It still amazed you a little at how nervous you became around him as if you knew nothing of what you were doing, but when you regained your composure you thought it was an excellent plan.

Meetings with Kaz were regular, but always in secret and alone, and they worked to exchange information that you considered useful for him with what he would allow Pekka to know.

You didn't know the full plans and you weren't part of them in any way, or you would be found out, but you knew about almost everything that was going on. The attacks, the fights, the traps, the injuries... you had to look at everything from the outside without being able to intervene. It was frustrating for you, more than anything in the world, and you had to admit that you had taken a liking to crows, even if you had seen them only a couple of times, so you also looked after their safety.

One day you received a note and went to a meeting with all the members of his group present, to finally hear the full version of what Kaz intended to do to finish off your boss. It was a brilliant idea, but you were a little worried about your position in all of this.

“You mean I'm going to be there watching everything Pekka and his thugs do?”

"It will be the best" he answered you. His face still had a bruise on his cheek, a memory from the last fight he had, and he looked exhausted "Jesper and Nina will be there, plus you'll be in disguise" he added and you nodded at that.

When the moment came you thought it would be an easy task, but when Kaz started to get brutally beaten you had to muster all your willpower not to throw yourself into trying to face Pekka, even with your zero skill. He sounded so convincing when he said about Alby that even you believed it, feeling suddenly awed by the cynical smile on Kaz's blood-smeared face. And he also mentioned you in the story, although not directly, saying that it was all about revenge for having abandoned you two when you were children.

You were able to breathe again until Pekka and his entire gang left the place in search of a son who wasn't really buried and you four were left alone. Under other circumstances you would have run to Kaz, cupped his face in your hands, sobbed, and told him it was over. But instead, you just stood in front of him and watched him; his eyes were wild with fury and a thirst for revenge that had already been quenched, but you sensed a hint of calm when he became aware of your presence.

"Breathe," you said in a whisper. Jesper and Nina were dismayed by the closeness with which you spoke to him, as they knew little of your history together “You're fine. We all are,” you assured him. That situation took you back to multiple panic attacks in the past where, given the impossibility of physical contact, all you could do for him was talk to calm him down. It always worked and Kaz had forgotten how soft your voice was and the way you brought him back to the real world. You decided to risk trying to do something else to comfort him and cautiously stretched out your hand towards him, instantly seeing his eyes widen in terror. But your hand ended up landing, more like a touch than a squeeze, on the man's bicep, which was covered by his coat; it wasn't intrusive, or abrupt, and Kaz was surprised that he didn't feel anything negative about it. He looked at your hand and then he looked at you with that usual serious expression, but he didn't push you away and allowed you to stay that way for just a few seconds, after which you decided to move your limb back.

You didn’t receive a verbal response at any time, but you did see him exhale shakily (so softly that you barely noticed) and nod his head while still looking at you, as if he were letting go of a huge weight that was stuck in his chest and at the same time assure you that it felt like a victory. Victory for beating Pekka, victory because he wasn't engulfed by an attack when you touched him, and victory because somehow you were there. You were with him, again.

“Now can we go back to normal?” Jesper asked, to break the silence, and you felt like laughing. Have they ever had a normal life? you asked yourself, but you didn't say.

"Yes" was all Kaz said and taking one last look at you he began to walk in the direction of the exit.

Both of them were curious about the type of relationship you had with Kaz but neither thought it wise to ask at the time, although Nina was getting an idea of things thanks to your racing heartbeat and his that it was impossible not to hear a moment ago. You stayed there just long enough to have a drink with Jesper and then you left the Emerald Palace. You didn't want to go back home, but going with one of them didn't seem like an option either, and once you were on the street you felt worried about remembering the state the black-haired man had left. You trusted that by that time he would be calmer and as if they thought for themselves your legs began to walk to look for him.

It was cold again and you feared you would meet someone dangerous on the road, but you only saw a couple of drunks and a girl looking for clients. Until you were in front of the door, you wondered if it was a good idea to go in, thinking that you would probably be crossing a line that Kaz was not going to allow you to, and wondering if you were going to put up with his refusal, which was a pretty good chance.

With trembling hands you opened the door, which luckily was unlocked, and as if some unknown instinct were guiding you, you found Kaz's room; it was the only one from which light came out through the crack in the door and something told you that he was there. You knocked twice, fearing you had knocked so low that he hadn't heard, and even considered walking back the way you came, but didn't have time to as the door opened a few seconds later. He had already taken off his coat and vest, probably because they were stained with blood, and his black shirt was open at the top buttons, with the suspenders that held up his pants hanging on his thighs. But what caught your attention the most were his pale, gloveless hands.

"What do you need?" he asked you directly. His face looked worse now that the bruises had swollen and the blood was dry. He'd probably have them for a couple of days, and he was definitely going to have a scar over his eyebrow.

"I wanted to see you" you replied, instantly regretting not having considered your sincere words better "I mean... to see how you were" you tried to correct. You thought he would slam the door in your face, but instead he scooted to the side to let you in, then closed the door behind you with a soft click.

Again you felt alien to the place for a moment, thanks to the fact that he looked at you from head to toe as if your presence bothered him. You had to mentally remind yourself that he saw most of them that way.

“Your pay will be ready soon”

"That doesn't matter," you said softly. Several things had changed since the first conversation you had with him, because now that you knew why Kaz had done everything he had done and the traumatic memories returned to both of you, the money had taken a backseat.

You didn't say anything for a moment and you looked for a place where you could sit later. Kaz’s room, once painted green but now just damp walls, had a small bed by the window, a desk littered with papers and a lamp facing another window, with a simple bookcase placed on the top of the side wall; a nightstand, a place to wash your hands with a mirror above it, a circular table in the middle of the free space, and a single armchair that at least looked comfortable. It wasn't the prettiest place, but at least it was cozy.

"Your girl, did she leave?"

“Inej is not my girl. Or from anyone, she is free now” he answered you. He still wasn't looking at you and you noticed that he was having a hard time staying on his feet.

"I'm glad to hear it. She deserves it” you murmured sincerely. You thought that she would be important to Kaz, like all his partners, and you decided to venture out to see if he revealed something else to you. "She's very smart."

"She is"

"And she's pretty too" you added and without moving his head he looked out at yours. You felt as if he was reading your intentions through your eyes, a quality he had always had.

"I think so," he said without much interest.

"Are you very hurt?" you asked, changing the subject, as you took a step towards him. By inertia he took the same step, in the opposite direction, and that made you stop abruptly.

"Nothing to worry about" he exclaimed and though he thought, you couldn't have known, of course, get close to you, you decided to take that step back before he did anything else.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Mhm"

"What did I do to make you walk away?" you exclaimed, finally expressing a question that had been eating away at your chest and tormenting you for many nights in a row. And since there was silence, you spoke again: “Not like right now, but a long time ago. It's just… I never understood it. Before we were friends and for me… you were even like a family. I loved your brother too and I know losing him never affected us the same, but I was glad you were there for me after that. Then we got older and things got more difficult, but I still had you and that calmed me down. And then… we just drifted apart,” you muttered, shrugging, as you avoided his gaze. Kaz still didn't answer anything and you felt the obligation to fill the silence “Sometimes I remember the things we went through when we were young. The good ones, of course. Like that time we stole a cake to celebrate your birthday and it was probably the best sweet I've ever eaten” you commented, smiling at the memory "And when I made you laugh with my bad jokes, no matter how angry or sad you were... I haven't seen you smile for a long time and I don't know if you celebrate your birthday anymore” you reflected wistfully, almost as if you were talking to yourself. And well, in the face of Kaz's inexpressiveness, that's practically what you were doing.

He hadn't said anything yet and you concluded that all your effort was useless. It had been a mistake to go looking for him, as well as trying to get even the slightest proof that he had ever missed you and you wished you had never opened your mouth. You sighed to contain the urge to cry and without saying anything else you turned towards the exit, intending to leave and return only for your money, but Kaz's voice echoed.

"Do you remember what I told Pekka?"

You stopped.

“You told him many things, you will have to be more specific”

"About not loving anything" he replied. Your hand trembled on the doorknob at the mere thought of what he was implying and I was able to hear your racing heart pounding in your chest. You heard footsteps and, still without moving, you heard him speak again "That's why I drifted apart”

You never, even in your wildest dreams, imagined that he would say something like that to you and perhaps you were just deluding yourself with the implication of the words, but it was enough to make you freeze in place.

"I still don't understand how that relates to me” you expressed in a low voice. Kaz took a few more steps towards you until you could see his shadow mingling with yours and you felt it was time to turn. He was watching you from above, seriously.

"I didn't want…" he trailed off. You would almost say he was nervous “I didn't want you to be…”

"A weak spot," you said without thinking, followed by a sigh that sounded almost amused "That's your problem, Kaz," you continued, your gaze far across the room, "You think love is a person's greatest weakness, when it's not like that"

"It is not?"

"No" you exclaimed with determination "I believe that... many times love is what keeps us alive. Struggling"

You were speaking for yourself when you said this. What was your motivation every day? In the past, the love for Kaz. Now, it was love for yourself and the hope that one day someone could love you with the intensity with which you loved others.

“I had already lost Jordie. I didn't want to lose you too,” he finally said and that's when your eyes locked with his. You never thought he would verbally express something like that.

“And did you prefer that I lose you?" you whispered in pain. You wanted him to be aware of things, because it seemed like it had never crossed his mind to stop thinking about your well-being and start thinking about your feelings. “You don't just lose someone when they die, Kaz. You can also lose those who are fully alive”

He didn't say anything, because he clearly didn't know what to answer to that, and while he reflected on your words, you caught a glimpse of a certain vulnerability in his blue eyes that you had rarely seen. I couldn't say that you knew the man in front of you better than anyone, but you had a considerable advantage thanks to the years you had lived with him.

“Okay, just… listen” you started to say, knowing he most likely wouldn't give you an answer “I know it's hard to live as we do— as all of us at The Barrel live, but the risks I decide or don't take. They are my decision, not yours. These years you have sought to keep me out of danger and I appreciate it, but you have to learn to trust me”

"I do. I trust you"

"Then show me," you replied. You couldn't help noticing that, even with his stained face, Kaz was still the most handsome man you'd ever seen “Friends do not avoid each other, nor do they move away and despite that, during all these years I have trusted you as from the first moment we were left alone”

You didn't know if you were saying the right thing, but at least you were saying something.

"And if it's too late?"

It was too late? Kaz wondered. He wondered if it was too late to open up to someone, to try to get over his trauma, to let go and finally love you the way he wanted to.

But all this remained as a thought, phrases that couldn’t leave his throat.

“It's not for me,” you assured him. “But my patience won't last forever. I think you should know that”

You couldn't even imagine how many emotions Kaz was trying to process at that moment, but even he himself didn't understand what a mess you'd made of him with that conversation. From his perception, he had admitted that he loved you, but from his eyes, you didn't seem affected by it. And you, contrary to what he thought, felt like you were going to faint.

You were about to leave, for the second time, but he spoke:

“Stay,” he said, sounding more desperate than he would have liked. “I don't know what to say, but… just stay here. I don't want us to be alone tonight”

Us. That fucking habit of Kaz's to speak in the plural and make you a nervous wreck.

You looked at the bed and found that it was too small for both of you, to which we had to add his refusal to be close to others. Proof of this was the unconscious movement of sticking your hands as close as possible to his body during the entire time you were talking.

"Use the bed, obviously you need it more than me" you muttered and went directly to the armchair. Fortunately your first impression wasn’t wrong, it was very comfortable.

The room was so small that the apparent distance between the pieces of furniture didn't mean much, so when he sat on the bed you could see him perfectly.

The memory of one of the times when both of you were in similar situations came to your mind. That night you had been woken by frightened screams from the next room, in that abandoned house where you and Kaz found shelter, forcing you out of bed to investigate.

It was hard to comfort a person without physically touching them, especially when he had nightmares, and over the months you'd had to get used to it. The boy hated waking you up, it made him feel guilty and stupid, but you always kept him company. You never spoke, never asked questions, you just stayed there so he knew he wasn't alone.

Maybe something like that was what Kaz needed tonight.

"Rest" you exclaimed. His head turned to look at you and you detected a different and special glow in his eyes; as if it were a mixture of fear, softness, and gentleness. You appreciated that look for a few more seconds, which you feared you would never see again in your life, and then you reached out your hand to turn off the light on the desk.

Silence reigned in the darkness.

You settled in the chair, trying to figure out what would be the best sleeping position, and at the same time you heard Kaz slide between the sheets on the bed. After a while, your eyelids felt heavy, a consequence of the fatigue that the hustle and bustle of the day had left you, and when you were about to fall asleep, a voice pulled you out of your reverie.

"Thank you. For everything”

The phrase was a whisper, a delicate caress in your ear, but you understood it clearly. And you decided to think that when Kaz said 'for everything' he meant literally everything you had selflessly done for him during his life; like he just realized you were important. But it's not that he had just noticed it, but that he had just accepted it.

You wanted to stretch out the moment as long as you could because, even if you weren't looking at him, you knew he was awake thanks to the sound of his breathing, but at some point sleep overcame you and you fell fast asleep.

Kaz had nightmares that night, like always, but the difference was that when he woke up in shock in the morning, you were in the same room. So seeing you there, keeping him company, was reason enough to calm him down.

And like every time this had happened, he felt like the luckiest man in the world.

#kaz brekker #kaz brekker x reader #the crows #six of crows #jesper fahey #inej gafha #wylan van eck #nina zenik #mathias helvar #shadow and bone #shadow and bone netflix #kaz brekker x you #kaz brekker fanfic #kaz brekker imagine

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barblaz-arts · 8 months

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I know that pilot was gold!!!! The only thing that kept me alove was the promise of more and Helluva Boss!!!

But yeah their interactions, Vaggie OMG i love this idiot face every time Charlie feels too much and get too excited is GOLD.

It is always refreshing to have a well established couple since the beginning that work thors issues together. I might live for a good slowburn, but the fluff woth a dash of angst around them was enough to get me feed.

And the songs... the songs!!!!!

Exactly! There were so many moments where Vaggie is stressed about something but then she sees Charlie being her theatrical adorable self and she just immediately melts.

She loves her so much 💗

And i know what you mean. I get it when people dont take much interest in an already established ship because I'm like that in a lot of cases, but something about Chaggie got me so invested even tho they're already dating for years now. People complain that they don't act like a couple, not being all over each other and shit, but their behavior with each other is my ideal portrayal for couples i write. As great as seeing physical chemistry is, i love it when a couple just shows how much they enjoy being with each other even more. And just... Like each other as a person yanno?

And oh my gosh the songs. They were so good, i applaud their song writers. And the fact that most of their voice actors were theater actors in a lot of musicals i loved really made it even better. This is a long shot, but since Nifty was the only one who didn't get to sing more than two lines in a song, i hope they get her to sing more next season. Nothing special, just a fun musical number that maybe welcomes a new sinner in the hotel. Like a Be Our Guest kind of thing. Otherwise casting Kimiko Glen for her would be suuuuch a waste.

(for those who don't know her, this is Nifty's VA)

youtube

#asks #hazbin hotel #i know i coulda linked maybe a song from the mlp movie she was in #but ya gotta appreciate her live vocals here

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buckets-and-trees · 6 months

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Hi Aspen, Cedar trees has been seeping into my mind lately (not that I’m complaining, but I’m blaming ovulation). Can I ask what a day in the life looks like for our dear couple? Do they ever run into each other doing their own independent tasks in town? Does reader ever watch Steve with his guards and become enamored with seeing him train/in charge?

Nonnie, I adore this ask!

A day in the life is a pretty odd juxtaposition between routine and a "plot of the week" kind of life. Running into him, depends on the day - but of course you love him more and more. As king, for Steve there are far more out of the ordinary things that crop into his days, whereas for you there are routines, ceremonial bits, and things that only change more based on the season, especially the first year of your marriage.

However, once the two of you came to the initial understanding that your marriage was more than just a political alliance between kingdoms with Steve acquiring someone to be his queen, Steve made some changes pretty swiftly to daily protocols so the two of you could grow together as a couple.

Title: A Shift in the Morning Routine Characters/Pairings: King!Steve x Queen!Reader Word Count: 1100

Content/Warnings: established relationship, reference to morning sex

Additional Notes: I've got so many head cannons that I want to build into more moments with the Cedar Trees AU, (including 2-3 more asks from @stargazingfangirl18 and @gifsbysimplysonia) but here is at least one.

↠ Masterlist | Aspen's Ask Box | Field Guide to the Forest

Not everything changes overnight, you are still new to the kingdom, your role as queen, and growing in familiarity with the people, the land, and your responsibilities, but the new intimacy of a deeper connection and commitment that you and Steve pledged to each other unlocks a wholly different sense of security that trickles steadily into your bloodstream in a way that make the days warmer, brighter, and bearing the duties you have becomes more natural. They were not impossible before, nor difficult, you had been raised and prepared since birth to be ready to become someone’s queen, but the sense of belonging that breathed now between you and your husband – that you were husband and wife – shifted things fundamentally.

But there are things that do change specifically in your patterns and behaviors. The first thing to change is having breakfast brought in for you both any night the king sleeps in your chambers, and because there is so much protocol and support from palace staff around you, the palace notices quickly that it seems that the king is spending every night with you. There are a few - a very few - who raise an eyebrow at this behavior. Those few seem to think that surely if the king has taken such a liking to his new queen, that's all well and good, but he is the king, why not invite you to his quarters? But no one dares question the king, and much of the palace see his growing devotion to you as only another sign of his very good and kind heart, his capacity to care only showing consistently now in another form.

The servants do know not to bring breakfast until the two of you ring for it though.

Except for unexpected emergencies, the two of you are not to be disturbed until the king has had time with his queen and the two of you are in a state of decency, donning your bedclothes or robes as appropriate.

After a few weeks of this, there's a morning where the king's private secretary is getting antsy while he waits to give the king his first briefing of the day, and Lord Barnes diplomatically intervenes.

"My King," Bucky bows his head in deference that appropriately reflects his respect for Steve's position as king and their tie as friends since schoolchildren before Steve inherited any title. "Coulson doesn't want to disturb you, but he is growing more concerned we will fall behind on your majesty's royal itinerary if he cannot brief you soon ahead of this morning's audiences with the delegations from Vanaheim and Malibu."

The soft sigh Steve lets out is short and you're certain only you can hear, though you know Bucky has seen the affect his arrival and announcement have had as his face reflects warmth, a bit of mirth, but also the duty and responsibility to keep his friend in line with his responsibilities as right hand.

The two of you had lingered much longer in bed that morning, for the pleasure of both of you (twice for you, the second time with Steve). You reach for his hand where it was resting on the corner of the table, slipping your fingers into his palm and brushing your thumb over his knuckles. “I would be a poor queen if I kept you here any longer then.”

Now Steve actually huffs. “You are not keeping me, I choose to breakfast with my wife, and I am not yet finished taking my nourishment for the day.”

You tilt your head and grin. “A kingdom cannot wait on their king all morning.”

“If I may,” Bucky interjects, and you both turn your attention to him, “Coulson could brief you as easily here as anywhere else.”

Steve nods and a wide smile spreads over his handsome face. “Bring him in, Buck.”

Your heart warms and flutters, the two of you holding each other’s gaze for another moment, and he reaches for more bread.

When Lord Barnes returns with Coulson behind him, Coulson stands with only a little apprehension at the end of the table, but Bucky takes a seat across from you, to the right of the king, and begins to fill a plate of his own with breakfast.

“Your majesties,” Coulson addresses with a bow.

“Coulson,” Steve nods.

“Shall I start with the reports from the borders of the kingdom?”

“Are updates in regard to the delegations not more important than the border reports?” Steve questions, his brow furrowing.

It was fleeting, but you see the slightest of a glance to you and your presence, and your stomach hardens with guilt.

Coulson takes a breath to respond, but Steve holds up a hand. “I see. The queen’s insight may be valuable as we hear what you have to say as she is no stranger to royal politics.”

That hardening melts away at his words.

“Indeed, she may often prove to be invaluable in our efforts here in the coming days but as we move forward, as well, given that there are parts a queen may play that are wholly unavailable to a king.”

Bucky does not look up, but you see a relaxed grin on his face, and as you turn to gage Coulson’s reaction, you see his own previous apprehension had dissolved. “I would agree, your majesty.”

“Moving forward, if the queen should not mind, I would like you to deliver the morning briefing to us both while we breakfast. Come in straight away with the day’s food, Coulson.”

Steve squeezes your hand. “Do you object?”

A show of trust, of valuing your opinion, of seeing you as an asset as his queen – it is the furthest thing from your mind to object. “I serve this kingdom without reservation, my king.”

“One could not ask for a more dutiful or beautiful queen at my side.”

Those blue eyes bore into yours.

You know he means those words.

The full silence in the room only hits you when Lord Barnes clears his throat.

“Start with Vanaheim, Coulson, I meet with them first, correct?”

“Yes, your majesty.”

Over the weeks that turned into months and years, you grew to like Coulson very much, and after that first day when Steve stated his trust in you, Coulson never showed any hesitancy in you ever again, and, in fact, became one of your most staunch champions in the kingdom.

READ THE NEXT PART: WINTER SOLSTICE read more of the Cedar Trees AU

↠ Masterlist | Aspen's Ask Box | Field Guide to the Forest

#steve rogers #steve rogers fanfic #steve rogers fic #steve rogers x you #steve rogers x reader #royal au #cedar trees au #female reader #aspen wrote something #askpen #aspen's spring surprise slumber party

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old-people-like-avatar · 7 months

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Netflix Avatar the Last Airbender S1 - Overall Thoughts [SPOILERS]

I am a longtime fan of Avatar the Last Airbender. I did not watch it in its original 2005 run, but I discovered it in around 2010 after my good friend R.S. recommended it to me. It's been my #1 favorite TV show ever since and I have rewatched it more times than I can count. I was cautiously optimistic about NATLA.

Now, having watched the whole first season of NATLA, and looking at the season as a whole, I think the best word to describe it is uneven. I can't say that I loved it, and I can't say that I hated it. But there were things I really liked about it and things that really did not work for me. Overall, I enjoyed watching it -- if only to dissect what did and did not work about the adaptation -- and would want to watch more.

WHAT WORKED

Everything to do with Zuko and Iroh. I found myself going back through just to rewatch all of the Zuko and Iroh-related scenes. I thought Dallas Liu really nailed Zuko -- from tantrums about his journal being stolen to incredible action sequences to the boyish vulnerability of worrying about the laces on his gauntlets. He took an iconic character and made him his own. NATLA added some incredible scenes and lines to my favorite duo: Lu Ten's funeral (coupled with orchestral version of "Leaves from the Vine"); Zuko's first war council; Iroh choosing to go with Zuko on the boat; the 41st Division; Iroh putting a blanket on Zuko. And I liked that NATLA emphasized that Iroh needed Zuko in the wake of Lu Ten's death as much as Zuko needed Iroh after his mother left.

Daniel Dae Kim's interpretation of Ozai. Ozai in ATLA is kind of one-dimensional. Daniel Dae Kim's Ozai adds a deeper layer to him in that he genuinely seems to think he's doing legitimate parenting -- even going so far as to visit Zuko after burning his face and remarking, glibly, that he'll recover ("but he'll never heal," says Iroh). It adds an even more monstrous angle to his cruelty because Kim's Ozai seems to think he's doing it for his children's own good. This post perfectly encapsulates my feelings about why I thought the agni kai between Ozai and Zuko was an excellent addition to NATLA.

Zuko/Aang. These two bonding over goat hair brushes was the scene I never knew I needed. The way Aang managed to wrest a little smile out of Zuko in that scene before Zuko blew up at him for criticizing the Fire Lord? And the way that tied into the "Compassion is a sign of weakness" scene from the agni kai? Great character work.

WHAT DID NOT WORK

Dialogue. I already observed at length my dissatisfaction with the clunky, exposition-dumping dialogue in my episode-by-episode writeups. It certainly wasn't as bad as the Movie-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named, but . . . there was no art or subtlety to it, and no trust in the audience. A disappointment.

The GAang did not feel like family. The lack of breathing room in the 8-episode season meant that all of the "filler" episodes that fleshed out the relationships between Aang, Katara, and Sokka were sacrificed. I am not saying NATLA needed to recapture each of the filler episodes. But they needed to build the foundational bonds between the main trio with showing not telling and they really didn't. They separated them for big chunks of 2 episodes. And, really, they just felt like traveling companions. That took all of the emotional heft out of, well, everything related to Aang, Katara, and Sokka. I mean, frankly, the kid actors did a better job establishing the "family" dynamic just by being themselves in their press interviews than the show did with the characters.

Aang did not run away from responsibility. I am not one of those people that's just mad that the show wasn't exactly like the cartoon. No. What I mean is, even putting aside the cartoon, even if you just look at NATLA itself: their own themes were undercut by never showing Aang actually running away from responsibility. Each avatar seemed to be berating Aang for doing something he was never actually shown to be doing.

Katara. I really don't think this one is on the actress. Katara felt like a fundamentally different character from ATLA's Katara. It's not to say an adaption is not allowed to have their own interpretation of a character, but... I just did not understand NATLA Katara. There was no passion, no rage, no overbearing nurturing. She was... I don't know what she was. Traumatized, yes, but nothing grew out of that trauma? Meek, until the plot demanded that she suddenly become a waterbending master without any guidance other than a waterbending scroll? The "younger sister"? More than any of the main characters, I'm not sure what NATLA was trying to say about Katara at all. And, as a result, I'm afraid the word to describe it might be uninteresting. And given that she is the heart and soul of Team Avatar, this one was really tough.

Despite the fact that a lot of NATLA did not work for me, I still enjoyed it because the things that did work for me, well, really worked. So. I'm here for all of the Zuko/Iroh scenes!

#avatar the last airbender #atla #a:tla #avatar: the last airbender #netflix atla #natla #netflix avatar #live action avatar

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queen-of-deans-booty · 8 months

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Your Savior

Pairing: Cop!Dean Winchester x Female!Reader

Word Count: ~1.9k

Warnings: angst, being taken hostage at gunpoint, fearful of your life

Request by @jessicalynnann: What about cop/detective dean and him and the reader are in an established relationship and she owns a cute little bakery… well what if something happens like she gets attacked but doesn’t tell him and he finds out and is upset but comforts her…

Summary: You have a little bakery that is your pride and joy and a boyfriend on the police force who you're so proud of. He doesn't have a lot of dangerous cases until one day, three gunmen decide to take a bank hostage. A bank that is a couple of blocks from your bakery.

Square Filled: criminal au (2022) for @spnaubingo

Author’s Note: any and all comments are appreciated <3

You have to bake two dozen cupcakes, a two-tier cake, and a half dozen cookies before the end of the day and you’re working as hard as you can to get that done. You have flour on your apron and face, quiet music is playing from your speaker, and you have your hands elbow-deep in a bowl of batter.

The bell on the front door rings signalling someone walked into your bakery store, and you try to peek out of the room to see who it is.

“I’ll be right with you!” you call out. “Give me one minute!” The person doesn’t wait for you to come out to them so they walk into the kitchen. You’re about to yell at them when you see who it is. “Dean!”

“Hey, sweetheart,” he grins.

Dean is a respected cop that everyone knows. He has been on the force since eighteen, and he’s only gone up from there. He walks behind the counter and kisses you even though some of the flour gets on his face.

“What are you doing here?”

“What, I can’t stop by my girlfriend’s bakery?” You raise an eyebrow at him and he laughs. “No, I just wanted to say hi on my break.”

“Hi,” you smile. “Today has been hectic and I haven’t been open for nearly an hour. I just got this big order in for a birthday party this weekend. I’m trying to get as much as I can done so I don’t have to do it later.”

“Where’s Maria?”

“Coming in late. She has a sick kid at home, and her husband won’t be able to pick him up until after ten.”

“I was going to take you out for lunch but I can come here.”

“No, Maria can hold down the fort for an hour. I’d love to go out to lunch with you.”

“Okay.” He grabs one of the fresh muffins you made and takes out a ten dollar bill which he sets on the counter. “I’ll be back at twelve.”

“Hey, I don’t need your money.”

“It’s stealing. I’m a cop. I uphold the law,” he grins. He leans down and kisses you. “I love you.”

“I love you, too!”

Right before Maria shows up, your bakery filled with customers who are hungry for your sweets. With her at the register, you can focus on the big order which you’re almost done making the batter for. This whole bakery idea is all because of Dean. When you two were in high school, he encouraged you to continue bake. The school held a bunch of bake-offs which you participated in, and everyone fell in love with your food.

Starting junior year of high school, you started selling your baked goods for cheap until you got orders from practically everyone. His family owned a section of a building in the mall for their seasonal work, so they let you use it when they weren't. When Dean became a cop, you made cookies and cupcakes for all the officers in the office.

Being a cop is something you wished Dean didn’t pursue because it’s a very dangerous job, and you’re always worried that he’s not going to come home. He’s mostly a beat cop who does a lot of desk work and will occasionally do the big things like drug busts and hostage situations but those are far in between.

You don’t like it but you know he’s the best person for the job. He’s determined, he loves helping people who can’t help themselves, and he has a passion for the job. Just like you.

Noon comes faster than you think it does, and you start to clean your work space so that when you return from lunch, you can start with a clean area. Dean walks in through the front door just as you’re finishing up.

“Y/N, Dean is here,” Maria calls from the front.

“Coming!” You put the dirty rags in the small hamper and take off your dirty apron. There is some flour on your clothes but not enough to cause you to not go out in public. That’s the reality of being a baker. You have flour on everything you wear. “Where are we going?”

“Razzio’s.”

“Italian food. Yum,” you giggle. “I’ll be back in an hour.”

“Have fun!” Maria smiles.

Razzio’s is located in the same block as your bakery so you two walk over there. The owner knows Dean from when he stopped a robbery fromt aking place, so now he gets free meals and discounts when he comes in. Dean still pays full price for the food even though Razzio doesn’t always take it.

“Dean! Welcome in!” Razzio greets.

“Hey, Raz. Got a table for me?”

“Of course. Window okay?”

“Perfect.”

Dean likes to try everything on the menu so he has Razzio cook him up something new every week without ordering, and every week, you end up loving what he brings to the table. It’s not unusual for Razzio not to lay menus down for you.

“So, I was thinking this weekend, we can take some time off,” Dean says.

“Like a getaway?”

“Yeah. My family has a cabin up north that I’d love to take you to.”

“It will be nice to relax instead of worrying about what orders I need to prepare for next week.”

“See? Win-win.”

“You’re a dork,” you giggle and kiss him.

Razzio is perfect like always, and you walked away with a free meal. What Razzio doesn’t take, Dean leaves as a tip for him. You walk back to your bakery hand-in-hand with a full stomach and a happy heart. You reach his police car when the radio he has strapped to his shoulder crackles to life.

“Unit 27, I got a 10-31 in progress. All three subjects appear to be armed. Please respond.”

10-31. You’ve been with Dean long enough to know that it’s a robbery. Subjects being armed means they have guns.

Dean grabs the small radio and presses the button to respond back.

“Unit 27 responding.” He turns to you. “I gotta go.”

“Please be careful.”

“Always,” he winks.

He kisses you goodbye and hops into his police cruiser. You watch him peel out of the parking lot before going back inside. It seems like not a lot of people have come in while you were gone so nothing bad happened. You resume your baking in the kitchen and slide in two batches of cupcakes into the oven when the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.

Something isn’t right.

You walk carefully to the closed kitchen door and peer out of the small window to see three men with big guns inside the store. Maria and the other customers huddle together in fear. Are these the three subjects the same ones that the dispatcher was warning Dean about? How did they escape? Why did they come here? Are they looking to steal some food?

You take your phone out and dial Dean’s personal cell and place it to your ear. Pick up, Dean, pick up. Come on, pick up. You get his voicemail because he’s probably busy with the situation he got called away on.

“Dean, I need you here. There are three men with big guns in the bakery. Please hurry. They might be--”

“Hey!”

You look up and lock eyes with one of the suspects. You quickly hang up and duck down but he has already seen you. The man storms into the kitchen and grabs your arm tightly. You’re thrown off balance that your phone is dropped when he drags you out where everyone else is. You don’t struggle to get away in fear of being shot and let them tie you up.

“Are you the owner?” the leader asks. You nod because you have tape over your mouth. “Where’s the money?” You shake your head and he cocks his weapon. “Where’s the fucking money?!”

You mumble something underneath the tape, and one of the them rips it off you.

“Fuck,” you hiss at the pain. “I don’t have a lot of money. You’re wasting your time here.”

“No, you see, I know you have money. I see you leave this store every day with a bag full of it. Where is it?”

“Not here.”

Like hell you’re going to tell them there is a big safe hidden behind a picture frame in the abc with a bunch of cash stored there. You have most of the cash in the bank but you keep a chunk of it here for emergencies only. You’re not going to give them your hard earned money.

“Okay.” The leader points his gun at you and Maria cries where she sits. “You have until the count of three to tell me where the money is or I blow your fucking head off. Deal?”

The fear has sunk in and you start crying not only for you but for everyone else here. MAria is such a good mother and wife, she doesn’t deserve to be killed. Every customer in here has a life, someone they go home to. You cna’t do that to them. You have no idea if Dean got your message so you can’t rely on him to be here and save you.

“One.”

You look up to answer when you spot someone moving behind him. You look and see Dean’s beautiful green eyes looking into yours. He has four other cops with him that snuck in through the back.

“Two.”

He puts a finger to his mouth to tell you to keep quiet, and you look back at the man who is threatening you with a gun.

“Thr--”

“Wait! I’ll tell you!” you gasp.

“I’m waiting.”

“Okay. If I tell you, you let them go. They have nothing to do with this,” you gesture to the other hostages.

“We’ll see. Where’s the fucking money?”

You look behind the three gunmen and notice Dean and the other cops come out quietly with their guns out.

“Right behind you.”

The leader turns right into the barrel of Dean’s gun. He goes to raise his own to fight but notices the other four cops with guns on them. They are outnumbered and they don’t want to die.

“Man, you three were hard to catch. Why’d you come here?” Dean chuckles. “Lower your weapons. All of you. Turn around with hands behind your backs.”

The three men do as they’re told, and three officers put them in handcuffs. Another ones goes over to the hostages and starts to get the out of their ties while Dean rushes over to you.

“Oh, my God, Dean,” you cry.

“I’m right here, baby. You’re okay. You’re safe now.” Once free, you get up and run into his arms. You break down crying and he smoothes down your hair in comfort. “I’m right here. You’re okay now.”

One of the cops calls for backup so that the gunmen are taken away in three separate cars. Paramedics come to check everyone out, and the money that the gunmen took is being processed to return back to its owners.

“Are you okay? Are you hurt?” Dean asks.

“Yeah. They didn’t hurt us. Well, one of them grabbed my arm hard but I don’t think it’s enough to form a bruise. I didn’t think you got my message. I didn’t think you were coming.”

“I will always come. I will always be here to protect you,” he promises.

Follow my library blog @aqueenslibrary where I reblog all my stories, so you can put notifications on there without the extra stuff :)

#dean winchester #dean winchester x reader #dean winchester fic #dean winchester fanfiction #dean winchester fanfic #dean winchester fluff #dean winchester angst #dean winchester fiction #dean winchester fan fiction #dean winchester fan fic #supernatural #supernatural fanfiction #supernatural fic #supernatural fanfic #spn #spn fic #spn fanfic #spn fanfiction

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cbrownjc · 2 months

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Hey :) just saw your post with your speculation about how much Eric/Daniel will be in S3. And while this isn't a definitive answer or anything, Rolin did address the question of whether or not Daniel would still play a part in the story post-s2 in this interview for the A.V. Club: https://www.avclub.com/rolin-jones-interview-with-the-vampire-season-2-finale-1851566667

I kinda feel like this means we'll see him more than just in a couple of scenes here and there, even in S3 (though he didn't specifically say "in season 3". But I feel like "still" implies this?)

Only it's difficult to judge because any present-day storyline they do with him is a big question mark since they seem to have departed from books (where he only gets turned shortly before the concert and does not part from Armand). What Armand is up to in the present-day is also a question mark imo. At least until the story converges at the concert.

I mean, I'll be real I'm also just trying to convince myself he'll be in it more because I'll miss him otherwise 🥲

Hi!

So, first I want to say that I think the two major pieces of casting that still need to be done are obviously Gabrielle and Marius. And I've long speculated that Marius is already playing a huge part in Daniel's story because I really do believe that Marius was the one to erase Daniel's memories of his past relationship with Armand.

Yes, Marius plays an important role in Lestat's life, but he plays an even bigger one in Armand and Daniel's as well, especially going by the books. In the books, Daniel lived with Marius for almost 30 years -- first healing from his mental issues, and then as companions -- before getting back together with Armand during the Prince Lestat era. All that, plus given what Rolin Jones already said about Raglan James, I don't think Justin Kirk is secretly playing Marius. So Marius still needs to be cast, and I very much expect him to be deeply involved in Armand and Daniel's storyline, going forward.

I just don't see that happening much in Season 3, however.

Because Season 3 is Lestat's story and focus, primarily. Just like Season 1 and Season 2 were mainly focused on Louis.

There is really only one episode in those two seasons where you can say Daniel was focused on -- outside of just interviewing Louis -- and that was episode 2x05. And even then, Louis factored heavily in that episode as well.

Armand and Marius play major roles in Lestat's story. Daniel doesn't. So if Daniel has any type of major storyline in Season 3, it will have to be with those two characters, IMO; as well as the Talamasca, since they were the ones to publish Daniel's book in the first place, and Rolin already said they and Raglan James will play an even bigger role in the show than they did in the books.

But without an episode count yet, I just can't see it being a huge focus. Mostly because characters like Marius still need to be fully set up and established. Also, I already think Armand is being set up to be a false Big Bad in Season 3 (since he's pretty much a villain in The Vampire Lestat), so I think whatever of Armand's POV that we get in Season 3, in the present day, will be very limited too, IMO, if we get it like we did in episode 2x03.

And yet, IMO, the only way we are looking at getting another episode like 2x05 in Season 3 is if it's told from Armand's POV. Because, again, Armand actually ties into Lestat's story, both in the past and in the present. And I think for sure that whatever Armand is up to in the present will have something to do with Daniel, as well as whatever else might be going on in the setup for Akasha rising.

Heck, if my theory is right that Marius was the one to wipe Daniel's memories of his and Armand's past relationship, Armand and Marius might have a present-day scene together, likely discussing Daniel (along with what Lestat is doing).

And yes, while Eric might still be in the top five for the call sheet going forward, that really doesn't say much IMO without knowing the Season 3 episode count. I mean, I'm sure Sam Reid was top 5 on the call sheet in Season 2, but if you look at his screen time in Episodes 2x01 and 2x02, it really wasn't much. And we didn't see him at all in episode 2x05, only heard his voice. And he didn't appear in episode 2x06 until the end.

I thought they found a way to work Lestat into the story of Season 2 very well, expanding on things from the book. But he still wasn't in the first few episodes very much.

And Daniel is even more different because he's not mentioned or referenced in The Vampire Lestat book at all.

So wrt Daniel in the present day, I'm tempering my expectations. Because yes, whatever is going on with Eric's Daniel in the present day is completely off-book. But, with every other facet of the story, the show has very much been on-book, in a rather strict way. Lestat's story is the main story of The Vampire Lestat and therefore will be for Season 3 IMO. And I think, whatever happens with Daniel in the present day is going to have to tie into that story. And that can't really happen via Daniel directly.

Louis' story is already being set up to tie into Lestat's present-day storyline directly, with his challenging all the vampires in the world to come for him if they dare. One of the reasons Lestat even became a rock star in the first place was to try and protect Louis by drawing attention to himself in an even bigger way than Louis' memoir drew attention to Louis.

But there are only two ways I see Daniel's story drawing directly to Lestat, and those are not in a way that directly has to do with Daniel. Because Lestat doesn't even know Daniel, has never met him before or interacted with him. (No I don't think they changed that from the book.)

So it's only through Armand, possibly Marius, and the Talamasca that Daniel ties into the larger story of what's going to be going on with Lestat in the present day. (Maybe a bit of Louis too, but the vampires we heard talking at the end didn't seem to be threatening Daniel, only Louis. Curious.) And, again, without an episode count yet, I just don't know how much time that focus can really get, especially when you have to set up Marius as a character; as well as probably having to set up the Talamasca even more as well; as well as maybe not revealing too soon what Armand is up to in the present day to keep his motives as mystery and have non-book readers wondering if Armand is the Big Bad villain they think he is or not.

And having to do all of this, plus laying preparation for adapting Queen of the Damned next. The book where Daniel actually does get a lot of focus.

And this also lines up with what Assad let slip about Season 4 being when we would see Armand's backstory. (Which is when QotD would start being adapted if TVL isn't split into 2 seasons like IWTV was).

And Rolin Jones flat out said people need to stop jumping ahead because Devil's Minion was "3 books ahead" of where they were now in adapting (which at the time was the 2nd half of the IWTV book), and to "slow down" about it.

So for now, I'm going to listen to RJ and just "slow down" about this.

So, in doing so, while I think we'll see Daniel in the present day in Season 3, I still don't think we'll see him much. And I think when we do, one of the episodes we'll get will probably be a stand-alone episode in the vein of episode 2x05 that focuses on what happened in the past. (Which I think will be an episode that focuses on why Daniel once woke up in a parking lot in Milwaukee not knowing how he got there). And I think for sure he'll be in the Season 3 finale. But other than that? 🤷🏾‍♀️ Again, I'm slowing down and tempering my expectations. Especially if we only get another 7-8 episode count again.

Because right now, for Season 3, Lestat's story is the main focus. Not Daniel, not Armand, and not Devil's Minion. And Daniel's character can only tie into Lestat's story via other people, which is rather limiting but can't be helped.

#Daniel Molloy #Lestat de Lioncourt #Armand #The Vampire Armand #Marius de Romanus #Louis de Pointe du Lac #Devil's Minion #The Devil's Minion #Rolin Jones #iwtv Season 3 #The Vampire Lestat #Queen of the Damned #iwtv Season 3 speculation #Interview with the Vampire #amc iwtv #iwtv #ask #ask and answer

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ladyluscinia · 11 months

Text

Ok, I think I might be exiting the "are you fucking kidding me?" period and ready to make a real argument, so lets talk about Three Act Structure!

Is OFMD S2 just the "Darkest Hour"?

A very common explanation I've been seeing for some of the... controversial... aspects of S2 is that it's meant to be that way. That the middle act is where the protagonists hit their lowest point. Where we get the big failure point. Where everything looks kind of shit.

S2 is supposedly just that point. It's The Empire Strikes Back. People have been making that comparison since before the first episodes even dropped, telling everyone to expect something that could be disappointing or unsatisfying - it's just a matter of needing to wait for S3 to pull it all together.

It's not a baseless framework to consider the show through - I'm pretty sure David Jenkins has mentioned it in interviews (or at least mentioned he planned for three acts / seasons) so it's certainly worth asking how he's doing at the 2/3rd mark.

So - quick summary of Three Act Structure:

Act 1 introduces our characters and world. It includes the inciting incident of the story and the first plot point, where a) the protagonist loses the ability to return to their normal life, and b) the story raises whatever dramatic question will drive the entire plot. Act 2 is rising action and usually most of the story. The protagonist tries to fix things and fucks them up worse, in the process learning new skills and character developing to overcome their flaws. Act 3 is the protagonist taking one more shot, but this time they are ready. We get the climax of the story, the dramatic question gets an answer, and then the story closes.

If you want examples, the Star Wars Original Trilogy is a very popular template. And, hell, he said it was a pirate story... the main Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy also does a solid job with their three acts.

Let's compare. (Spoiler: I'm not impressed 🤨)

---

First thing I need to establish... Wait. Two things. First is that Three Act Structure is flexible, so we can't really analyze success or failure by pulling up a list of necessary plot beats that should have been hit in X order. Second is that if you tell me you are writing a romance with a Three Act Structure - where "the relationship is the story" - the first thing I'm going to do is ask you how you are adapting it. Because while there's not necessarily anything preventing you from applying this to a character driven plot, most people are familiar with it as plot structure for externally driven conflict.

Unless there's a reason the status of the main relationship is intrinsically tied up in the current status of the war against the evil empire, a standard Three Act Structure is going to entail either an antagonistic force that absolutely wants your main couple apart being the main relationship obstacle OR the romance aspect being a subplot to the protagonist's narrative adventure. None of those sound like how the show has been described.

So how is OFMD adapting it?

---

Act 1

(Can't figure out how well Act 2 is doing if we don't start at setup.)

Right out the gate, OFMD breaks one of the main "rules" for a story where the Acts are delivered in three parts. Namely the one where the first Act is treated as an acceptable standalone story, with it's own satisfying yet open ended conclusion.

In Star Wars, A New Hope ends with the princess rescued, Luke finding the Force, Han finding his loyalty, and the Death Star destroyed. The Empire isn't defeated, the antagonists still live... the story is not over, but this one movie doesn't feel unfinished.

Similarly, Curse of the Black Pearl gives Jack his ship back, Elizabeth and Will get together, and Norrington has the English Navy let them all off the hook and give Jack and the pirates one day's head start.

OFMD's final beat of S1 being Kraken Arc starting is not that, even if Stede returning to sea is still a pretty hopeful note. Now... I don't necessarily think this was a bad call. At least, not if the story is the relationship. It's easy to close on a happy ending and then fuck it up next movie if the conflict is external and coming for them. Not so much if you're driving the story with your protagonists' flaws, in part because it should be really obvious at the end of setup that your main characters need development and can't run off together right now. I actually like that they were risk-takers and let S1 look at the situation clearly vs doing a fragile happy end, because it takes into account the difference between a character-driven and plot-driven narrative.

I think OFMD's Act 1 actually ends at maybe the Act of Grace? Well, there through the kiss on the beach, counting as our "first plot point" before everything goes wrong, basically.

At that point, they have setup the story and characters. We've been introduced to Edward and Stede's current issues. Signing the Act of Grace does make the intertwined arcs between them real - it's no longer a situation that either one of them could just walk away from like it was in 1x07 - and we narrow in on the (alleged) driving question of the show:

It's not about "Will Stede become a great pirate?" or "Will we develop a better kind of piracy for the crew?" - the show is the relationship and the big question is "What is Stede and Edward's happy ending?"

Act 1 ends on their first solution, being together and making each other happy and admitting it's more than just friendship. Act 2 starts, appropriately, by saying both of them are currently too flawed for that to go anywhere but crashing and burning.

Now... looking back, what does Act 1 do well vs poorly?

I think it's really strong on giving us the foundation for BlackBonnet's characters and flaws. We aren't surprised Stede goes home or Edward goes Kraken (or at least... we weren't supposed to be surprised. There are still a lot of holdouts blaming Izzy for interrupting Edward's "healing" despite how at this point in the story it doesn't make sense for Edward to have the skills to heal... but I digress). The relationship question is compelling at the end of S1, the cliffhanger hooks, and the fandom explosion of fics did not come from nowhere - the audience was invested.

I also think Act 1 does a great job of settling us in the universe. We understand the rules it abides by, from how gay pirates are just a fact of life to how there's no important organs on the left side of the body. Stede has a muppety force field. Rowboats have homing devices, and port is always as close as you want it to be. Scurvy is a joke. The overblown violence of pirate life is mostly a joke, but we are going to take the violence of childhood trauma seriously.

Lucius's fake-out death, while technically part of Act 2, works well because Act 1 did a good job of priming everyone to go "obviously this show wouldn't kill a crew member for shock value, and we're 100% supposed to suspend disbelief about how he could have survived getting flung into the sea in the middle of the night." And we do. And we get rewarded for it.

Regarding antagonists - a big focus of any setup - the show is deliberately weak. The one with the most screentime is Izzy, and he's purposefully ineffective at separating our main couple. Every antagonist is keyed to a particular character, and they function mostly to inform us of that character's flaws and development requirements. The Badmintons tell us about Stede's repression and feelings of inadequacy, and Izzy tells us about Edward's directionless discontent and tendency to avoid his problems. Effectively - the show is taking the stance this will be a character driven narrative where Stede and Edward's flaws are the source of problems and development the solution. No person or empire (or social homophobia) is separating them...

...which leads me to something not present - there nothing really about the struggle of piracy against the Empire. Looking at Curse of the Black Pearl... we see piracy is in danger. The Black Pearl itself is described as the last great pirate threat the British Navy needs to conquer. Hangings are omnipresent - Jack is sentenced to die by one almost as soon as he's introduced to the story, when his only act so far had been to wander around and save Elizabeth from drowning. OFMD tries to invoke this kind of struggle in 2x08, but there's no foundation. Our Navy antagonists are Stede's childhood bullies, and so focused on Stede the crew isn't even in danger when they get caught. The Republic of Pirates is getting jokes about being gentrified, not besieged.

Even the capture of Blackbeard by the Navy is treated as a feather in Wellington's cap but not a huge symbolic blow against piracy... because we just do not have that grand struggle woven into Act 1. You only know the "Golden Age of Piracy" is ending if you google it, or have watched a bunch of pirate shows.

Overall, a solid Act 1, well adapted to the kind of story they've said they were looking to tell - a romance in the (silly-fied) age of piracy, instead of a pirate adventure with a romantic subplot.

---

Now, Sidebar - Where is the story going?

The thing about the dramatic question - in OFMD's case: "What is Stede and Edward's happy ending?" - is that a) there's normally more than one question bundled up in that one + sideplots, and b) while you aren't supposed to have the answer yet, you can usually guess what needs to happen to give you the answer.

Back to our examples... Luke's driving question is "Will the Empire be defeated?" Simple. Straightforward. Also: "Will Luke become a Jedi?" The eventual climax of our story from there is pretty obvious... the story is over when Luke wins the war for the Rebellion in a Jedi way. That's the goal that they are working toward.

Pirates of the Caribbean is a bit more complicated. We're juggling more characters and have a less defined heroic journey, but there are driving questions like "Is Jack Sparrow a good man?" and "Is Will Turner a pirate / what does that mean?" and even "Will the British Navy defeat piracy?" They get basic answers in Curse of the Black Pearl, and far more defined ones in At World's End. Still, this is another plot-driven narrative. They've laid the foundations for the Pirates vs Empire struggle, and when that final battle turns into the trilogy climax then you know what's happening.

OFMD is not doing a plot-driven narrative. To judge how they are doing at their goals, we have to ask what they think a happy ending entails in a character sense.

Clearly it's not the classic romantic sideplot, where the climax is the first kiss / acknowledgement of feelings. They've teased a wedding in Word of God comments a lot, so that's probably our better endpoint. Specifically, though, a wedding where both of our protagonists aren't ready to flee from the altar (big ask) and where they've both grown enough that their flaws / mutual tendencies to run away from life problems won't tank the relationship.

In Stede's case it's still massive feelings of inadequacy and being too repressed to talk about his problems. Also he ran away from his family to chase a lifelong dream of being a pirate - "Is Stede going to find fulfillment in being a pirate captain, or will the real answer be love?" Edward meanwhile expresses a desire to quit piracy and retire Blackbeard, but we also find out he's struggling with massive self-loathing and guilt from killing his father - "Is retiring what Edward wants to do, or is he just running away?"

If they are going to get to a satisfying wedding beat at the climax of their story, what character beats do we need to hit in advance?

Off the top of my head - both characters need to self-realize their flaws (a pretty necessary demand of anyone who runs away from problems). They are set up to balance each other well, but also to miscommunicate easily. They have to tell each other about or verbally acknowledge that self-realization so it can be resolved. Stede has to decide how much being a pirate means to him. Edward has to decide if he's retiring and what he wants to do. They both need to show something to do with getting past their childhood traumas given all the flashbacks. Through all this, they also need to hit the normal romance beats that convince the audience they are romantically attracted to each other and like... want to get married.

Oh, and this is more of a genre-specific sideplot, but once they demonstrate a behavior that hurts the people who work for them, they need to then demonstrate later how it won't happen again. Proof of growth, which is kind of important in a comedy where a lot of the humor is based in them being massively self-centered assholes. Stede doesn't earn his acceptance in the community until he kicks Calico Jack off the ship, making up for causing the situation with Nigel in the first episode. A workplace comedy can get a lot of material from the boss as the worker's antagonist, but if you want the bosses to stay sympathetic you have got to throw them some opportunities to earn it.

All that sounds like a lot, but like - the relationship is the story, right? If we spend so much time on establishing flaws big enough to drive a story, we also have to spend time on fixing them. Which is where the turning point hits.

---

Act 2: How it Starts

This is where the full story reality-checks your protagonist. Glad you saved your boyfriend and embraced new love in Act 1, but his repressed guilt means he's about to completely ghost you, and your own abandonment issues and self-loathing are about to make his dick move into everyone else's problem.

Again, it's a non-conventional choice OFMD has this start at the very end of S1 rather than with a sudden dark turn in the S2 premiere, but it's still pretty clearly that point in the Three Act Structure.

In Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back opens with a timeskip to our Rebellion getting absolutely crushed and hiding on a miserable frozen planet. The Empire finds them as the plot is kicking off and they have to desperately flee. They get separated. Han and Leia try to go to an ally for help and end up in Vader's clutches. It's a sharp turn from the victorious note that A New Hope ended on.

Pirates of the Caribbean's Act 2 starts dark. Dead Man's Chest opens with our happy couple Will and Elizabeth getting arrested on their wedding day for the "happy end" escape of the last movie. Jack has not been having success since reclaiming his ship, and we'll soon find out he's being hunted by dark forces. As for the general state of piracy, we get a horrifying prison where pirates are being eaten alive by crows, and a new Lord Beckett making the dying state of piracy even more textual. "Jack Sparrow is a dying breed... The world is shrinking."

The key here is making a point that our heroes aren't ready. This is the struggles part - things they try? Fail. The odds do not look to be in their favor.

Now, OFMD apparently decided to go all-in on flaw exploration, especially with Edward. The first 3 episodes of S2 are brutally efficient in outlining Edward's backslide. In S1 you could see he had issues with guilt and feeling like a bad person. S2 devolves that into a destructive, suicidal spiral where Edward forces his crew into three months of consecutive raids, repeats his shocking act of cruelty with Izzy's toe offscreen (more than once!), escalates it with his leg, and finally they state directly that Edward hates himself for killing his dad so much that he fears he's fundamentally unlovable and better off dead.

Stede's struggles are subtler, but most definitely still there. He's deliberately turning a blind eye to tales of Edward's rampage, half from simply being too self-centered to care about the harms Edward causes others, and half from being unable to face or fathom that he had the ability to hurt Edward that much. Upon reunion he wants to put the whole thing behind them, not addressing why he left in the first place. Very "love magically fixes everything" of him, except Stede is no golden merman.

Interestingly, here, BlackBonnet's relationship dysfunction has very clearly been having a negative impact on the surrounding characters we care about. Make sense, since it's the driving force of the story, but that also adds a lot more relationships we need to make right. Like... Edward is the villain to his crew. The show focuses on their trauma and poisoned relationships with him. And then draws our attention even more to Stede taking his side to overrule their objections to him.

For a story where the conflict and required resolutions are primarily character based, and the setup had already given the main couple a good amount to work with, dedicating a lot of S2 to adding more ground to cover was... a choice. Potentially very compelling on the character end, certainly challenging on the writing end... but not a complete break with the structure.

Bold, but not damning.

---

Act 2: How it Ends

Now it is true that Act 2 tends to end on a loss. Luke is defeated by Vader and loses his hand, and Han has been sent away in carbonite. Jack Sparrow for all his efforts cannot escape his fate, and he and the Pearl are dragged to the locker.

But the loss is not the point. The loss is incidental to the point.

Act 2 is about struggles and failure, but it's also about lessons learned. There's a change that occurs, and our cast - defeated but not broken - enters the final act with the essential skills, motivation, knowledge, etc. that they lacked in the beginning.

Luke Skywalker could not have defeated the Empire in Return of the Jedi until he'd learned the truth about his father and resisted the Dark Side in The Empire Strikes Back. (Ok, confession, I'm using Star Wars as an example because literally everyone is doing so, but frankly it's a better example of formulaic Three Act Structure repeating within each movie because on a trilogy level - relevant to this comparison - it is a super basic hero's journey in a very recognized outfit and as such the Act 2 relevance is also... super basic "the hero tries to fight the antagonist too early" beat where he learns humility. Not really a lot going on. So, for the better example...)

Dead Man's Chest has a downer ending with the closing moment of the survivors regaining hope and a plan against an enemy now on the verge of total victory - a classic Act 2. But in that first loss against Davy Jones we get Will's personal motivation and oath to stab the heart, Jack finally overcoming not knowing what he wanted and returning to save them from the Kraken (being a good man), Elizabeth betraying Jack (being a pirate), Barbossa's return, and Norrington's choice to bargain for his prior life back. The mission to retrieve Jack from the World's End is the final movie's plot, but things are already on track to turn the tables back around as we enter the finale.

Now, relevant sidenote - one major difference between Three Act Structure within a single work vs across three parts is that Act 2 continues into Part 3, and only tips over into Act 3 about midway through. This is because obviously your final movie or season cannot just be the climax. That's why both movie examples start with a rescue mission. They have to still be missing something so they can get the plot of their third part accelerating while they go get whatever that something is.

But if you wait until the 3rd movie / season to get the development going at all - you're fucked.

Jack's decision in the climax of At World's End to make Elizabeth into the Pirate King goes back to the development we saw in the Pearl vs Kraken fight in Dead Man's Chest. So does Elizabeth's leadership arc. Will's whole arc about becoming Captain of the Dutchman gets built upon in the third movie, but it starts in the second. Not just as an idle thought - he's actively pursuing it. Already consciously weighing saving his father vs getting back to Elizabeth as soon as he makes the oath. Everyone is moving forward in Act 2. Their remaining development might stumble for drama, or they might be a bit reluctant, but I know that they know better than to let it stick, because they already faced their true crisis points.

I'm not sure we can say the same about OFMD.

S2 does a good job of adding problems, yeah, but there's not really any movement on fixing them. Our main couple stagnates in some ways, and regresses in others.

Stede opened Act 2 by running away in the middle of the night back to his wife without telling Edward anything. We know he did it because of feeling guilty and his core childhood trauma of his dad calling him a weak and inadequate failure. Now in S1 he actually speedruns a realization of his shitty behavior with Mary, but what about S2? Well...

He continues to not talk to Edward about... pretty much anything. My guy practiced love confessions galore but Edward only finds out about going back to his wife via Anne, and it gets brushed aside with a love confession. He seems to think Edward wants him to be a dashing pirate, or maybe he just thinks he should be a dashing pirate. Idk, it doesn't get examined. Regarding his captaincy, they give him an episode plot about Izzy teaching him to respect the crew's beliefs, but this is sideplot to a larger arc of him completely overruling their traumas and concerns (and shushing their objections) to keep his boyfriend on the ship so. That.

Stede kills a man for reasons related to his issues, shoves that down inside and has sex with Edward instead of acknowledging any bad feelings. At least this time Edward was there and knows it happened? Neither Chauncey's death nor his dad have been mentioned to anyone. He gets a day of piracy fame that goes to his head, gets dumped, and ends on a complete beat down by Zheng where he learns... idk. Being a boor is bad? He's still wildly callous to her in the finale, and spends the whole time seeking validation of his pirate skills. He reunites with Edward, kisses, and quotes Han Solo.

Where S1 ended on a great fuckery, his S2 naval uniform plan after they regroup is ill defined except to call it a suicide mission - and we don't get to see what it would have been because it devolves into a very straightforward fight and flee. And gets Izzy killed. Quick cut funeral (no acknowledgement of his S2 bonding with Izzy), quick cut to wedding (foreshadowing), quick cut to... innkeeper retirement? Unclear when or even if BlackBonnet discussed Stede's whole driving dream to be a pirate and live a life at sea, but I guess that got a big priority downgrade. Despite the fact he was literally looking to Zheng for pirate-based compliments in the post-funeral scene.

I guess he's borderline-delusionally dogged in his pursuit of love now - so unlikely to bolt again - but he's also got at least a decade of experience mentally checking out in a state of repression when he's unhappy. And he's stopped being as supportive and caring toward the crew in that dogged pursuit, while arguably demonstrating a loss in leadership skills, so, um, good thing someone else is in charge?

And if Stede is a mess, Edward's arc is so much worse.

As established, they devote the Kraken to making Edward worse. He literally wants to kill himself and destroy everyone around him in the process because Stede left, and this is fixed by... Stede coming back. That's it. The crew tries to murder him and then exiles him from the ship (and Izzy takes the lead on both, indicating exactly how isolated Edward has become), but it's resolved in half a day by Stede just forcing them to put up with his boyfriend again. Like they think he murdered Buttons and still have to move him back in???

The show consistently depicts Kraken Era as a transgression against the crew, but they also avoid showing Edward acting with genuine contrition. He admits he historically doesn't apologize for anything, and then mostly still doesn't. It's a joke that he's approaching probation as a performance (CEO apology), and then the only person he genuinely talks to is Fang - the one guy cool with him - and the only person who gets a basic "sorry" is Izzy - the guy he really needs to be talking to. Edward's primary trauma is guilt, but apparently he only feels it abstractly after all that? He's only concerned with fixing things with Stede, despite Stede being about the only person around who hurt him instead of the reverse.

Speaking of primary traumas, Edward hating himself doesn't really go anywhere after the beat of self-realization. Apparently Stede still loving him is enough of a bandaid to end the suicide chasing, but he doesn't like. Acknowledge that. Edward is maybe sorta trying to go slow so he doesn't hang all his self-worth on Stede again (you can speculate), but they a) absolutely fail to go slow, and b) he doesn't make any attempt to develop himself or another support structure. Just basically... "let's be friends a bit before hooking back up." And then we get the whiplash that is Blackbeard and/or retirement.

Kraken Era is Blackbeard but way worse, like no one who has known Blackbeard has ever seen him. In the Gravy Basket Edward claims he might like being an innkeeper, before destroying his own fantasy by having the spectre of Hornigold confront him over killing his dad. The BlackBonnet to Anne & Mary parallel says running away to China / retiring makes you want to kill each other - burn it all down and go back to piracy. Stede rightfully points out prior retirement plans were whims. Edward gets sick of the penance sack after a day and puts his leathers back on to go try "poison into positivity". But also claims to be an innkeeper (look - two whole mentions!) when trying not to send children to be pirates after teaching them important knife skills.

Killing Ned Low is a serious, bad thing that prompts ill-advised sex and then going hardcore into retirement mode - leathers overboard, talk about mermaid fantasy, get retirement blessings from Izzy, end up dumping Stede for a fishing job instead of talking about how he's enjoying piracy. The fishing job, however, is also a bad thing and a stupid decision because Edward is a lazy freeloader fantasizing about being a better person. We have an uncomfortable, extended scene of "Pop-Pop" weirdly echoing his abusive dad and then sending Edward to go do what he's good at - disassociate, brutally murder two guys, fish up the leathers, rise as the Kraken from the sea. He continues with comically efficient murder but also he's reading Stede's love letters and seeking to reunite with him so... wait, is this a good thing? Post makeout / mass slaughter he's trading compliments on his kills with Zheng so. Yeah. Looks like it. Murder is fine.

Wait, no, skip ahead and Izzy is dying and Edward suddenly cares a whole lot as Izzy makes his death scene about freeing Edward from Blackbeard. Now being a pirate was "encouraging the darkness" because Izzy - a guy who had little to no influence over Edward's behavior - just couldn't let Blackbeard go. Murder is bad again, and he is freed. Minus the little detail that the murder he explicitly hates himself over was not related to Blackbeard or piracy whatsoever, so presumably haunts "just Ed" still. Anyway he's retiring to run an inn with Stede now, as the "loving family" Izzy comforted him with in his dying moments sails away from the couple that can best be described as the antagonists of their S2 arc. Also Edward implicitly wants to get married. It's been 3 days since making out was "too fast". He's still wearing the leathers.

So most of the way through Act 2 and Edward's barely on speaking terms with anyone but Stede, who he has once again hung his entire life on really fast? Crushing guilt leads to self-hatred leads to mass murder and suicide, but only if he's upset so just avoid that. He's still regularly idealizing Stede as a non-fucked up golden mermaid person (that maybe he personally ruined a bit) because he barely knows the guy. His only progress on his future is "pirate" crossed out / rewritten / crossed out again a few times, "fisherman" crossed out, and "innkeeper ?"

Just.

Where is the forward movement?

It's not just that the inn will undoubtedly fall apart - it's that the inn will fall apart for the near-exact same reasons that China was going to at the beginning of Act 2, and I can't point to anything they've learned in the time since that will help them. I guess Stede realized he loved Edward enough to chase after him, but that was in S1! They should be further than this by now. You can't cram another crisis backslide, all the Act 2 development, and the full Act 3 climax into one season. Certainly not without it feeling like the characters magically fix themselves.

If they just fail and keep blindly stumbling into the same issues because they don't change their behavior, then Act 2 doesn't work. You're just repeating the turning point between Act 1 & Act 2 on a loop.

---

Where Did They Fuck Up?

Actually... lets start on what they did right.

The one consistent aspect of S2 that I praised and still think was done well in a vacuum (despite being mostly left out of the finale) was the crew's union-building arc.

With only 8 episodes and more to do in them than S1, side characters were going to get pinched even if the main plot was absolutely flawless. That was unavoidable. With budget cuts / scheduling issues, we regularly have crew members simply vanish offscreen outside of one scene, meaning cohesive arcs for your faves was not likely. Not to say they couldn't have done better - my benefit of the doubt for the TealOranges breakup and Oluwande x Zheng dried up about when I realized he was literally just her Stede stand-in for the parallel - but something like Jim's revenge plot from S1 was realistically not on the table without, like, turning half the crew into seagulls to afford it.

The union building works around this constraint really well. They turn "the crew" into the side arc, and then weave Izzy's beats in so that they aren't just about Izzy. The breakup boat crew working together to comfort each other and protect him turns them into a unit, and Stede's crew taking it upon themselves to address the trauma vibes while the captains aren't in the way solidifies it across all our side characters. The crew goes to war with Stede's cursed coat and wins, they Calypso their boss to throw a party, and they capitalize on a chance to make bank with an efficiency Stede could only dream of.

We don't get specific arcs, but Frenchie, Jim, and Oluwande are defaulted to as leaders in just about every situation, and Roach is constantly shown sharing his inventions with different characters. Individuals can dip in and out without feeling like the sideplots stutter. Any sense of community in S2 is coming from this arc - even if there are cracks at the points where it joins to other storylines (Stede and Edward, Zheng, etc.)

So why does it work? Well, because it's a workplace comedy, and you can tell they are familiar with working on those. They know where the beats are. They know where to find the humor. They know how to build off of S1 because they made sure the bones were already there - an eclectic group of individuals that start as just coworkers, but bond over time in the face of their struggle against an inept boss who they grow to care for and support while maintaining an increasingly friendly antagonism because, you know, inept boss.

OFMD does its best work in S2 when it's being true to its original concept... and its worst work when it seemingly loses confidence in its own premise.

"The show is the relationship," right? It's a romance set in a workplace comedy. The setup of Act 1 was all about creating a character-driven narrative. So given that... where the hell are we getting the dying of piracy and a war against the English Navy?

That's not a character-driven romcom backdrop, it's an action-adventure plot from Pirates of the Caribbean or Black Sails. It's plot-driven, creating an antagonistic force that results in your characters' problems. Once the story is about the fight against the Empire, the dramatic question becomes the same as those adventure stories - "Will the British Navy defeat piracy, and will our protagonists come out the other side of the battle?"

Forget the wedding. The wedding is no longer the climax of the story, its back to the happy ending flash our romantic subplot gets after winning this fight.

Except, of course, trying to pivot your story to a contradictory dramatic question near the end of Act 2 can be nothing short of a disaster, because either you were writing the wrong story until now, or you've completely lost the plot of the real one. I shouldn't even be trying to figure out if they are doing this, because it should be so obvious that they wouldn't.

And yet.

What do the Zheng and Ricky plots add to the story if not this? Neither of these characters have anything emotionally to contribute to Stede and Edward - they truly are plot elements. It's a hard break from the S1 antagonist model, but it also takes up a lot of valuable screentime. This was considered important, but still Zheng's personality and motivation only gets explored so far as it's an Edward-Stede-Izzy parallel with Oluwande and Auntie, and they only need the parallel for Izzy's genre-jumping death scene. Which follows a thematically out-of-left-field speech about how piracy is about belonging to something good (workable) and how Ricky could never destroy their spirits (um...?). And then David Jenkins is pointing to it and saying things about "the symbolic death of piracy" and speculating S3 might be about the crew getting "payback"??? An idea floated by Zheng right before our temporary retirement, btw.

Fuck, the final episode of S2 didn't have time for our main couple to talk to each other because it was so busy dealing with the mass explosion of Zheng's fleet and Ricky's victory gloat. We get lethal violence associated with traumatic flashbacks until they need to cut down enemy mooks like it's nothing, at which point we get jokes with Zheng. The Republic of Pirates is destroyed outright, and it feels like they only did it because they got insecure about their "pirate story" not having the right kind of stakes. Don't even get me started on killing a major character because "Piracy’s a dangerous occupation, and some characters should die," as if suspending disbelief on this aspect makes the story somehow lesser, instead of just being a fairly standard genre convention in comedy. Nobody complains about Kermit the Frog having an improbably good survival record.

Did someone tell them that the heroes have to lose a battle near the end of Act 2, so they scrambled to give them one?

Just... compare the wholly plot-driven struggle in 2x08 to Stede and Edward's character-focused storylines in 1x10 and tell me how 2x08 is providing anything nearly as valuable to the story. Because I can't fucking find it.

At best they wasted a bunch of time on a poorly integrated adventure plot as, like, Zheng's backstory or something, and just fucked it up horribly by trying to "step up" the kind of plot they did for Jim. In which case the whole thing will be awkwardly dropped but damage is done. Otherwise, they actually thought they could just casually add a subplot like this because they've done something wildly stupid like think "pirate" is a genre on the same level as "workplace comedy" and can just trample in-universe coherency while you draw on other media to shore up their unsupported beats.

Bringing us to the most infuriating bit...

---

"...end the second season in a kinder spot."

If this was the goal, the entire season was written to work actively against it in way that is baffling and incompetent.

The really ironic thing is that the reason that the Act 2 part typically gets a downer ending is because of the evil empire that OFMD did not have to deal with until they pointlessly added it. A plot-driven story has an antagonistic force - a villain - that the heroes need to defeat. Something external working against them. The story ends when they beat the thing, and it's not much of a climax if they do most of the defeating before you get there. Ergo, they have to be outmatched up to the climax. Ergo, the second part cannot end on them feeling pretty comfortable and confident going into the third.

The same rules do not apply in the same way to a character-driven arc.

We already established Edward and Stede declaring their love is not the end of the story. Nor, necessarily, is both of them confidently entering a relationship. Even once they've developed a bunch they will have to show that development by running into the kinds of problems that would have broken them up before and resolving them better.

David Jenkins keeps talking about this idea that S2 is getting a hopeful open ending and S3 will get into potential problems, and like... I don't see any reason why they couldn't have done that successfully. They didn't, but they could've.

If S2 grew them enough as characters and then had them agree to try again in the last minute of the finale, they absolutely could have had a kind and hopeful ending where you were confident they could do it. And then a potential S3 can show that. It's a bit rockier than they were counting on, but they have learned enough lessons to not break up. And then the overall plot can build to proposal (start of Act 3) and wedding (the romantic climax). It doesn't have to be a blow out fight to be emotionally cathartic.

(Hell, the main rockier bit that they overcome in the S3 Act 2 portions could be marriage baggage. I'm sure they both have some. It would work.)

In the same way focusing on our character's long term flaws and character-driven conflict makes an Act 1 "happy ending" more difficult, I suspect it makes an Act 2 "happy ending" easier.

Instead they wrote an Act 2 that failed to convincingly start development and got confused on its direction, and then presented a rushed finale ending in a copy of the predictable disaster from S1 as though it's a good thing. They yanked the story at least temporarily into an awkward place where a romcom is trying to sell me on a bunch of serious drama / adventure beats that it has not put the work into, and inviting comparisons to better versions of those same beats in other, more suited media that make it look worse. The need to portray everyone as reaching happy closure overrules sitting with a major character death and using it for any narrative significance, while still letting it overshadow those happy endings because a romcom just sloppily killed a major character with a wound they've literally looked into the camera and said was harmless.

If I'm being entirely honest, Dead Man's Chest ends effectively at Jack Sparrow's funeral and then cuts to the British Navy obtaining a weapon of mass destruction, and it still feels kinder and more hopeful just because I leave with more faith the characters are actively capable of and working toward solving their problems.

OFMD S2, in contrast, has half-convinced me our main couple would live in a mutually obsessed, miscommunication-ridden horror story until they die.

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Additional Reading

Normally I link stuff like this in the post, but that requires more excitement than I'm feeling right now. Here's my alternative:

Where I thought they were going with Edward - really outlines the mountain of character development they still have unaddressed

Where I thought they were going with Izzy - touches on a lot of themes that might be dead in the water & also context that's still probably relevant to why Izzy got a lot of focus in S2

My scattershot 2x08 reactions

An ask where I sketched out the bones of this argument, and another where I was mostly venting about the fandom response

This one, this other one, and this last one (read the link in op's post too) about genre shifts and failure to pull them off

The trauma goes in the box but it never opens back up - the whole point of Act 2 is that they needed to start opening shit like that - and also they focus so much on needed character growth and so little on following through

They can't even carry through on character growth that we got last season???

Why Izzy's death feels like Bury Your Gays ran smack into shitty writing

EDIT: Oh and this post is REALLY good for outlining the lack of change in way less words than I did

#our flag means death #ofmd #ofmd s2 #ofmd s2 spoilers #ofmd meta #three act structure #character arcs #blackbonnet #genre #blackbeard ofmd #stede bonnet ofmd #my meta #ladyluscinia #ofmd critical

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